U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles has dismissed with prejudice the amended $10 billion defamation lawsuit that President Donald Trump brought against The Wall Street Journal. The ruling ends Trump’s second effort to challenge the paper’s reporting on a birthday card it said he sent to Jeffrey Epstein more than two decades ago, reports NBC News.
Gayles found that the revised complaint did not clear the high bar public figures must meet in defamation cases. Trump failed to plausibly show that the Journal published the story with actual malice.
The judge wrote, “As President Trump has not plausibly alleged that each Defendant made defamatory statements with actual malice, the Amended Complaint must be dismissed. And because this is President Trump’s second attempt to allege his claims, the Court finds that dismissal with prejudice is appropriate.”
Court examines claims about the 2003 birthday book and related statements
The Journal’s story, published last July, described a birthday book that Ghislaine Maxwell compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The book appeared to contain a card from Trump, who was friends with Epstein at the time. Trump filed the original suit shortly after the article appeared. He later refiled the $10 billion lawsuit after a judge threw out the first one.
The card featured a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman with what looked like Trump’s first name signed in the pubic area. It also held a typewritten note that presented an imaginary conversation with Epstein. Trump has denied any role in creating the card.
The lawsuit accused the paper of inventing the note and asserted that no such document existed. It alleged that the writers “falsely represent as fact that President Trump drew the naked woman’s breasts and signed his name ‘Donald’ below her waist, ‘mimicking pubic hair.’” The complaint further said the article caused Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
Epstein’s estate later released a card that matched the Journal’s description. Trump and the White House have said the document is a fake. The suit also argued that the paper’s decision not to publish an image of the card in the original story showed that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.” The House Oversight Committee later released the card after obtaining it from the estate.
The complaint contended that the Journal should have known the story was false because Trump denied it. It noted that the paper did not interview Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison on sex trafficking charges. The original article stated that reporters wrote her a letter requesting an interview and included a comment from her attorney.
Attorneys for the Journal said the revised suit came “nowhere close” to proving actual malice. They described the required showing as one in which “the false statement was made with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
The lawyers stated that “the Article itself established that the Journal not only investigated” the matter but also “informed readers that President Trump decried the Letter as a fake and denied writing it.” They added, “There is nothing inherently defamatory about sending a bawdy letter to a friend.”
They noted that the article “emphasizes that the Birthday Book was created before Epstein was first arrested” and “makes clear that President Trump’s friendship with Epstein ended years before Epstein was charged with sex crimes.” The attorneys also argued that the later public release of the card showed the story was “substantially true.”
Maxwell acknowledged assembling the birthday book during an interview last year with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. She said she could not remember whether Trump contributed to it.
The White House has maintained that the signature does not belong to Trump and differs from his distinctive full signature. Democrats gathered documents in which Trump signed only his first name, and those signatures appear very similar to the one on the card.
Published: Nov 1, 2026 06:30 am