Judge dismisses Trump's $10bn lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein letter

A US judge has dismissed President Donald Trump's $10bn (£7.4bn) defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, ruling that the case was "grasping at straws" and ran counter to the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press. Trump sued the newspaper's parent company, Dow Jones, and Rupert Murdoch last year after it reported on a letter allegedly written by him to the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The letter was said to be part of a birthday book compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003, before Epstein was charged with sex crimes. Trump has denied writing or signing the letter, which reportedly included suggestive language and a drawing of the outline of a woman's body. He accused the newspaper of slandering him and violating libel laws in publishing the article. Judge Darrin Gayles had already dismissed the defamation suit once, when it sought $20bn in damages. Trump's team refiled the case seeking $10bn, and this time the judge threw it out "with prejudice," meaning it cannot be filed again. In a 20-page ruling, Gayles pointed to the paper's "thoughtful and detailed investigation" behind the story and said the lawsuit was "grasping at straws" in an effort to "manufacture flaws" in the journalists' work. He found that Trump's legal team had not proven the defendants made defamatory statements with "actual malice," the high legal bar requiring proof that a defendant knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. Trump's team had argued that because he denied writing the letter when contacted by the Journal, the paper should have disregarded everything else learned in its investigation and not published the story. Gayles rejected that reasoning, writing that it "is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment." If that were the law, the judge wrote, "any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press," a result he said flew in the face of the "American privilege to speak one's mind." According to the Journal's report, the letter bearing Trump's name contained several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, apparently hand-drawn with a heavy marker. It included a joking reference that "enigmas never age" and allegedly ended with the words: "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret." The story appeared as the Trump administration faced intense criticism from both parties over the summer for its handling of Epstein documents. Trump and Epstein were photographed together at Mar-a-Lago in 1997, and a 10-foot-tall protest art installation mocking the alleged letter was later displayed on the National Mall in Washington, DC.