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Judge Darrin Gayles Dismisses Trump’s $10 Billion Defamation Suit Against Wall Street Journal With Prejudice
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Judge Darrin Gayles permanently dismissed Trump's defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal with prejudice. Trump failed to prove actual malice required for defamation.
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Dismissal in Miami
A federal judge permanently dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal, with U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruling that Trump failed to establish the standard of “actual malice” required for defamation suits.
The court said Trump’s $10bn case was “grasping at straws,” and Gayles wrote that the “Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice.”
Gayles issued the dismissal with prejudice in Miami on Saturday, which CBS News said means the case “cannot be refiled again,” making the outcome permanent.
The lawsuit stemmed from The Wall Street Journal’s 17 July 2025 exclusive describing a sexually suggestive birthday note attributed to Trump for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, and the House Oversight Committee later released a copy of the birthday letter.
Trump had denied responsibility for the text, the signature and the artwork, and he branded the newspaper’s coverage “false, malicious, and defamatory.”
First Amendment dispute
Judge Darrin P. Gayles rejected Trump’s argument that The Journal should have withheld its story after Trump denied writing the letter, and CNN quoted Gayles saying that such a rule would violate the First Amendment.
Gayles wrote, “Were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press,” according to CNN.
The court dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice after determining Trump still failed to establish “actual malice,” the high legal threshold public figures must meet when pursuing defamation claims.
The court pointed to The Journal’s efforts to obtain Trump’s response before publication and its inclusion of his direct denials as evidence that it followed appropriate reporting standards.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told CBS News that “President Trump will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants,” after the dismissal.
Aftermath and other suits
The ruling ended Trump’s attempt to sue over the Epstein-linked Wall Street Journal story, and Al Jazeera said Gayles’s decision “with prejudice” effectively blocks any future litigation on the matter. Trump has other ongoing defamation cases against other media outlets, including the BBC and The New York Times. CNN described the case as part of a broader pattern of Trump using the courts to pressure news organizations over unflattering coverage, and CNN noted that Trump also filed a $15 billion defamation case against The New York Times over its coverage of his 2024 campaign.
A judge dismissed the original complaint in the Times case but allowed Trump to refile, and in July the judge deferred a decision on the Times’ motion to dismiss and directed Trump to revise his complaint again. Judge Gayles wrote, “But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment,” as he dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice.
