President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit Friday over a Wall Street Journal article related to Jeffrey Epstein. But if Rupert Murdoch and his company that publishes the Journal fight the suit, it’s unclear at this point how Trump would win it or secure the billions of dollars in damages his complaint seeks.
The WSJ article, published Thursday, described what it called a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s name that was part of a collection given to Epstein by friends of the now-deceased disgraced financier for his 50th birthday in 2003 (before his first arrest in 2006).
According to the article:
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. 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 letter concludes: ‘Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.’
The WSJ article contains a denial from Trump that he wrote the letter or drew the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” the outlet reported the president as saying.
The article said pages from the leather-bound album gifted to Epstein “are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and [convicted sex trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine] Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.” The article added that it’s “unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review” of Epstein-related information, which comes amid complaints from Trump supporters over his administration’s failure to release all such information as promised.
Epstein died in 2019 while being held on sex trafficking charges, in what the medical examiner called a suicide.
The president’s civil complaint was filed in Florida federal court against Dow Jones & Company Inc., which publishes the Journal; News Corp., which owns Dow Jones; Murdoch, director and majority owner of News Corp.; News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson; and the Journal reporters on the story, Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.
One reason why Trump’s suit faces an uphill battle: He would have to clear the high legal bar for plaintiffs who are public figures. Known as the “actual malice” standard, it requires plaintiffs to show that defendants knew the information they published was false or recklessly disregarded the truth.
On that note, Trump’s complaint alleges that the civil defendants “possessed information and had access to information that showed their statements were false,” and that they published “with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity.”
But while that language recites the standard the plaintiff must meet, the complaint doesn’t seem to show exactly how Trump intends to meet it. That doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t, but without seeing how he would demonstrate the defendants knew what they were publishing was false or recklessly disregarded the truth, there’s little reason to think that he would prevail on this crucial point.
Of course, we don’t know ahead of time what the legal discovery process could uncover. But that’s another point that could bode worse for Trump than it would for the Journal. That is, if the case moves toward trial, while Trump’s lawyers could take depositions and seek more information from the defendants, the Journal’s lawyers could do the same against the plaintiff — i.e., Trump. Barring some truly surprising revelation about a professional outlet like the Journal’s conduct in reporting on and publishing the article, the prospect of discovery alone almost makes it hard to see Trump pressing the case that far. Does he want to produce oath-bound testimony about his relationship with Epstein that would fuel more news stories and put that relationship on front pages and social media feeds? Even without knowing the Journal’s editorial process ahead of publication, its lawyers very likely anticipated this suit and guided the article accordingly. What’s less clear is Trump’s legal game plan in filing the suit, if he has one. True, the president has secured monetary settlements from media organizations in cases that didn’t necessarily seem to warrant them. But a Dow Jones spokesperson said they “have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit,” so this one might not be headed down that sort of path. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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