Esra Tekin
13 April 2026•Update: 13 April 2026
A federal judge in Florida on Monday threw out President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a report on a crude birthday card he is alleged to have sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
US District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the suit, concluding that Trump’s complaint “comes nowhere close” to meeting the actual malice standard, meaning a plaintiff must show "the false statement was made with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
“Quite the opposite. The Article explains that, before running the story, Defendants contacted President Trump, Justice Department officials, and the FBI for comment," Gayles wrote.
"President Trump responded with his denial, the Justice Department did not respond at all, and the FBI declined to comment. In short, the Complaint and Article confirm that Defendants attempted to investigate. The Article also states that the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) reviewed the Letter," he added.
“Accordingly, President Trump’s conclusory allegation that Defendants had contradictory evidence and failed to investigate is rebutted by the Article and is insufficient to establish actual malice.”
Trump brought the case last July, not long after the Journal published an article reporting that a 2003 birthday album prepared for Epstein appeared to contain an unusual card from Trump, who was friendly with Epstein at the time.
According to the report, the card included a hand-drawn sketch of a nude woman, with what appeared to be Trump’s first name written in the pubic area, along with a typed note imagining a conversation with Epstein, who was later convicted of sexual offenses and died in a jail cell in 2019.
Trump team vows to re-file suit
Trump denied any involvement with the card, while his attorney claimed in the lawsuit that the newspaper had fabricated the story.
Later, Epstein’s estate released a copy of a card matching the Journal’s description. Trump and the White House have continued to insist that the card is fake.
The judge’s ruling did not address whether Trump actually authored the card.
Because Trump came “nowhere close” to satisfying the actual malice requirement, Gayles said he would not resolve factual disputes over the article’s truth, writing that “whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein’s friend are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation.”
Gayles, who was appointed in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, dismissed the case "without prejudice," allowing Trump the opportunity to try again.
Citing legal precedent, the judge gave him two weeks to submit an amended complaint, and Trump’s legal team said they would, in order to hold accountable “those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People.”
“We are pleased with the judge’s decision to dismiss this complaint. We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting," a representative for Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s publisher, responded.
Trump and Epstein were part of the same social circle for more than a decade before their relationship ended in the early 2000s.
Trump has said the split happened because he viewed Epstein as a "creep" and believed he had taken staff members, including young women, from Mar-a-Lago.
In testimony before the House Oversight Committee earlier this year, former President Bill Clinton also said he had spoken with Trump about Epstein “20-something years ago,” recalling that Trump told him: "we had some great times together over the years, but we fell out all because of a real estate deal.”
Epstein, a wealthy financier with extensive political connections, pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor and died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The FBI and Justice Department has said he preyed on over 1,000 women and girls.
Trump has not been charged with any crime related to Epstein and has denied wrongdoing.
