&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Trump loses $10 billion defamation lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday letter")
A US judge on Saturday (Oct 31) dismissed US President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and media magnate Rupert Murdoch over a report that Trump sent a bawdy birthdayletter to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump had sued for $10 billion after the newspaper's story was published in July 2025 detailing the president's alleged 2003 letter to Epstein, which featured a drawing of a naked woman.
In July last year, the Wall Street Journal in a report claimed that United States President Donald Trump sent a birthday card to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003. According to the report, Ghislaine Maxwell prepared a special gift to mark Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday: a birthday album, which included letters from his family and friends, including Donald Trump. The report also published the card. It was a “bawdy” letter to Jeffrey Epstein, bearing President Donald Trump’s signature. It bore a drawing, depicting a woman’s breasts. “A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal’s Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo reported. It concluded with the line: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
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In Saturday's ruling, Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed Trump's lawsuit with prejudice, meaning Trump cannot file an amended version of the suit, as he did when Gayles turned down an initial version of it back in April. The judge wrote that in bringing his defamation claim, Trump had both times failed to establish that the defendants “acted with actual malice.” The House Oversight Committee last year published a copy of Trump's alleged birthday note to Epstein, which consists of a short dialogue between "Donald" and "Jeffrey."
