The Wall Street Journal asked a judge to dismiss Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the paper “once and for all” in a blistering court filing accusing the president of attempting to “subvert” the First Amendment with his Epstein-related suit.
The Journal published a bombshell report in July 2025 alleging that Trump had sent a graphic 50th birthday letter to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that was included in a book compiled by Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003.
Trump denied writing the letter and sued the Journal and its Rupert Murdoch-controlled parent company for $10 billion for defamation, only to have the case thrown out in April for coming “nowhere close” to pleading actual malice, the standard required for a public figure to bring a successful suit.
The court, however, left the door open for Trump to file an amended complaint, which the Journal has now responded to in a scathing motion to dismiss.
The filing argues that the new complaint “does not remedy any of the defects identified in the Court’s dismissal order” and in fact “compounds them” by recycling allegations already rejected by the court.
“This Court held once that Plaintiff failed to state a defamation claim against Defendants. The [amended complaint] only bolsters the conclusion that he can never do so,” it adds.
To show actual malice, Trump’s must prove the Journal knowingly published a false statement that harmed his reputation, or published the statement with a reckless disregard for the truth.
The article never said that Trump personally crafted the letter to Epstein—just that a bawdy letter “bearing Trump’s name” appeared in the birthday book, a fact that was confirmed when Congress released a letter from the Epstein estate that was identical to the one published by the Journal, the filing argues.
The letter shows an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein framed by a doodle of a nude woman or girl, with Trump’s infamous Sharpie signature appearing where the pubic hair would be.
The filing also notes that the article reported on Trump’s “well-documented relationship with Epstein” and the fact that the two men were socializing around the time the book was compiled, as evidenced by Trump’s own 2002 interview with New York magazine in which he said he’d known Epstein for 15 years and considered him a “terrific guy.”
And the amended complaint “re-packages” allegations previously rejected by the court that the Journal did not investigate the story before publishing, and that its article included “glaring omissions”—even though most of the information that was supposedly omitted does in fact appear in the piece, along with evidence of the journalists’ investigative efforts, the filing argues.
The filing stresses that the article included the president’s insistence that he later had a falling-out with Epstein and banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club prior to the disgraced financier’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from minors.
Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, with law enforcement ruling the death a suicide.
Trump’s complaints argued that the Journal had failed to reach out to Maxwell, the only living person besides Trump who could verify the article’s details, or had interviewed her and “intentionally failed” to report on her comments.
In fact, the article explicitly states that Maxwell—who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein’s crimes—didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview. Her attorney provided a published statement saying she was focused on her appeal.
After the article appeared, Maxwell told then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that she did not remember Trump submitting a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday book.
The amended complaint claimed those comments should have been included in the article—even though they were made a week after its publication.
The amended complaint also claims the Journal failed to include “any denial from President Trump as to whether he signed the letter,” despite the article dedicating three paragraphs to Trump’s insistence that the letter was a “fake thing” and that, “This is not me.”
Despite having “every opportunity” to plead a defamation case against the Journal, the case “remains groundless,” the filing argued.
It asked for the suit to be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can’t be amended, and to be awarded attorneys’ fees and costs under Florida’s anti-SLAPP laws protecting against frivolous lawsuits aimed at suppressing constitutional free speech on a public issue.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Trump’s lawyers for comment.
