A federal judge on Thursday dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the publisher of The over a report linking him to Jeffrey Epstein, but gave the president until April 27 to try again with an amended filing. US District Judge Darrin Gayles said Trump had come “nowhere close” to showing that the newspaper acted with actual malice.
Trump had sued the newspaper and its owners, including Rupert Murdoch, in Florida federal court last summer and was seeking at least $10bn in damages. The case centered on the Journal’s July 17 report that said Trump’s name appeared in a birthday book given to Epstein in 2003 and that the message included a drawing of a woman’s body. Trump said the message was “a fake thing” and denied writing it.
The dismissal was without prejudice, which means the fight is not over. Trump will be allowed to file a new, amended lawsuit, and his lawyer said he will refile the “powerhouse” suit and “continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People.”
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The ruling turns on the highest bar in defamation law for public figures: actual malice, meaning the defendants must have published something false knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard for whether it was true. Gayles said Trump had not plausibly alleged that standard, even as the dispute stayed tied to a report that had already drawn fresh attention after Democratic lawmakers posted an image of the birthday note on social media before other Epstein documents were released.
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For now, Trump has lost the first round, but not the case. The deadline set by the court gives him until April 27 to decide whether to sharpen the complaint and return to the same fight over what was written in that 2003 birthday book.
