The report, published last year, described a sexually suggestive letter, accompanied by the drawing of a woman’s silhouette, which was said to bear the name Trump
A federal judge in the United States rejected on Saturday, the 31st, the $10 billion lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against The Wall Street Journal and media magnate Rupert Murdoch over a report about his ties to the financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex crimes. Judge Darrin Gayles, of Miami, concluded that Trump had not shown that the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice, a requirement under American law.
The decision definitively dismissed the case, preventing the same action from being filed again. The magistrate stated that Trump was “grasping at any argument” and that the action sought to “fabricate” flaws in the newspaper’s investigative report.
The report, published last year, described a letter of sexually suggestive content, accompanied by the drawing of a woman’s silhouette, which was said to bear Trump’s name and would be part of an album organized for Epstein’s 50th birthday, in 2003.
The president denied having written the message and described the publication as “false, malicious and defamatory.”
Gayles had already rejected the action in April, but allowed Trump to present a reformulated version of the complaint, filed in May. In Saturday’s decision, the judge stated that the allegations of malice were vague, at times “inconsistent and insufficient” to demonstrate that the newspaper published information that it knew to be false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
The magistrate also noted that the Wall Street Journal’s report did not ignore Trump’s denial, but informed readers that the president contested the authenticity of the letter and denied authorship.
