Judge Throws Out Trump's $10 Billion Suit Against the Wall Street Journal. Truth Is the Answer to a Story You Hate.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

A federal judge in Miami on Saturday threw out President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media owner Rupert Murdoch over the paper's story about a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the suit with prejudice, ruling that the president did not show the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice, PBS News reported. A dismissal with prejudice means the case cannot be refiled in that court.

"Grasping at straws, the Amended Complaint attempts to manufacture flaws with the investigation," Gayles wrote in a 20-page ruling, CNBC reported. The judge said the Journal had conducted a "thoughtful and detailed investigation." CNBC also noted that Gayles did not determine whether Trump actually wrote the disputed letter.

What the case was about

The Journal's July 2025 story described a letter bearing Trump's name in a birthday book Ghislaine Maxwell assembled for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. The card contained a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, and Trump denied having anything to do with it, NBC News reported. NBC added that Epstein's estate later released a copy of a card matching the Journal's description, and that Trump and the White House maintain the document is a fake.

Gayles first dismissed the suit in April and allowed Trump to file an amended complaint, which he did in May, according to PBS. In Saturday's ruling, the judge cited the Supreme Court's 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which requires public figures to prove that a publisher knowingly printed something false or showed reckless disregard for the truth. "The Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice," Gayles wrote. He also noted that the Journal's story "informed readers that President Trump decried the Letter as a fake and denied writing it."

"As President Trump has not plausibly alleged that each Defendant made defamatory statements with actual malice, the Amended Complaint must be dismissed," the judge wrote, adding that because it was Trump's second attempt, dismissal with prejudice was appropriate, NBC News reported.

Trump's side is not finished. A spokesman for his legal team told CNBC the president plans to appeal. "President Trump will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants," the spokesman said in a statement to CNBC. Gayles rejected the argument that the paper should not have published after Trump denied the letter, saying that view would effectively let public figures block unfavorable reporting and "runs afoul of the First Amendment."

The ruling lands as Trump is also in legal fights with the BBC and The Associated Press, and as CNN, MS NOW and Politico sue him for restored White House access, PBS reported. Dock Line has also covered a separate challenge to the White House press bans brought by citizens: Citizens Sue Trump Over White House Press Bans.

Opinion: Truth is the answer to a story you hate, and Epstein's victims deserve all of it

Conservatives have good reason to distrust much of the national press. I have watched it shade stories, bury corrections and treat Christians as a punch line. But the remedy for bad reporting has always been better reporting and the plain truth, not a $10 billion lawsuit that a judge, twice, found could not even meet the legal bar.

The law here is not a liberal trick. The actual malice standard protects every outlet, including the conservative papers, radio hosts and small websites that report hard things about powerful Democrats. If a president of either party could punish a paper simply by denying a story, the conservative press would be the first to feel it the next time the other side holds the White House.

Scripture sets the standard for both sides. "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness." A newspaper that invents a document deserves to be held to account. But the court found the Journal investigated and printed the president's denial. Fairness requires saying that out loud, and fairness also requires saying the judge did not rule on whether the letter is genuine. Trump has the right to appeal, and he will.

The bigger issue is not this lawsuit. It is Jeffrey Epstein and the girls who were abused. Maxwell, who assembled that birthday book, was convicted of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, CNBC noted. Every American, and every Christian especially, should want the whole truth about who knew what and when, no matter whose name is on the paper. That is not a partisan wish. It is what justice for the victims requires.

Three days before an election, voters should keep their eyes on the issues on the ballot. But they should also remember that a free people needs a free press, even one it does not like, and leaders who answer hard questions rather than sue them away.