Judge dismisses Trump's $10 billion defamation suit against Wall Street Journal

The ruling

On Saturday, 31 October 2026, US District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Miami dismissed Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, ruling that the claim cannot be refiled. Trump had asked for $10 billion in damages and also named Rupert Murdoch as a defendant. The suit accused the paper and its reporters of knowingly and recklessly publishing numerous false, defamatory and disparaging statements, which it said caused overwhelming financial and reputational harm to the president. This was the second time the case was thrown out: Gayles first dismissed the complaint about six months earlier, and Trump then filed a modified version. The dismissal is with prejudice, so the claim cannot be filed again, though Trump can still ask an appeals court to review the decision.

The letter at the centre of the case

The Journal published its story in 2025, describing a sexually suggestive letter that the paper said bore Trump's name and was included in an album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. The text sits inside the outline of a hand-drawn naked woman and closes with a wish that every day be another wonderful secret. According to the paper, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's companion at the time, asked several dozen of his associates to contribute, and Trump was among those approached. Trump has denied writing the letter and called the story "false, malicious and defamatory". Epstein was arrested and charged in July 2019 with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit that offence, and he died in his New York cell a month before he was due to stand trial.

The judge's reasoning

Gayles found that Trump had not shown the Journal acted with "actual malice", a standard public figures must meet by proving that defendants knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The ruling said the suit was "grasping at straws" as it tried to "manufacture" flaws in the paper's investigation. Le Soir reports that the judge did not rule on whether the letter is authentic, but found that the Journal had investigated the story and published it in good faith. In his 20-page decision, Gayles rejected Trump's argument that, once he declared the letter a fake, the paper should have ignored everything else it had learned. He put the point plainly:

“But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

Trump's legal team responds

A spokesman for Trump's legal team said in a statement that the president will continue to press forward with the case against the Journal and all the other defendants. The spokesman added that Trump intends to pursue those he accuses of misleading the public with smears. Trump's options are now narrower: he cannot file another altered version of the complaint in the district court, although an appeal remains open. The first dismissal came about six months before this ruling, so the case has now been thrown out twice in the same court.