Judge dismisses Trump's lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday book
A United States judge has thrown out Donald Trump's ten-billion-dollar lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, ruling the case clashed with freedom of the press and cannot be filed again.
A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, ending a case over a letter the newspaper said Trump wrote for Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book. The judge ruled the suit was grasping at straws and ran counter to the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press.
Trump had sued the newspaper's parent company and its owner after the Journal reported on a letter bearing his name that appeared in a birthday book compiled for Epstein in two thousand three, before Epstein faced sex-crime charges. Trump has denied writing or signing the letter.
The case had already been dismissed once and was refiled seeking ten billion dollars. This time the judge threw it out with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again. In a twenty-page ruling, the judge praised the newspaper's detailed investigation and said the lawsuit tried to manufacture flaws in its reporting.
The ruling also addressed the standard for proving defamation against a public figure, finding Trump's team had not shown the newspaper acted with actual malice. The judge warned that accepting Trump's argument would block journalists from publishing negative stories whenever a public figure denies an accusation.
Reporting based on coverage from BBC News.