Judge permanently ends Trump's $10bn Epstein letter lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal

A 20-page order, and the courthouse door closes for good

On Saturday, October 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles of the Southern District of Florida dismissed President Donald Trump's amended defamation complaint against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal with prejudice; ending the case in the trial court for good. “As with his first attempt, he has failed,” Gayles wrote in a 20-page order.

The defendants, Dow Jones, News Corp, News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson, chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch, and two Journal reporters, had asked the Miami court to throw out the case for a second time. Gayles concluded that Trump had again failed to establish the standard of “actual malice” required for a public figure to win a defamation claim.

The dismissal follows an earlier ruling in April, when Gayles dismissed the original complaint but gave Trump leave to file an amended version. Saturday's order closes that door permanently: the same claims cannot be brought again before this court, though Trump may appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Why did the second complaint fail like the first?

Under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a public figure suing for defamation must show the publisher knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth; the bar known as actual malice. Gayles found the amended complaint fell “short of pleading actual malice”: “the allegations regarding malice are conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article and often irrelevant to whether Defendants knew or should have known that the statements in the Article were purportedly false.”

The judge wrote that Trump was “grasping at straws” with his $10 billion case and suggested his legal team had attempted “to manufacture flaws with the investigation” behind the Journal's reporting. At an August hearing, Trump's lawyer Alejandro Brito argued the reporters had failed to investigate whether Trump actually signed the letter; Gayles voiced open skepticism, telling the lawyer: “I don't see those words specifically used in the article.”

The suit, filed July 18, 2025 in Miami, brought two defamation claims, each seeking at least $10 billion in damages. It named the two reporters, Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo, alongside Dow Jones, News Corp, Murdoch and Thomson. The original complaint was dismissed in April; Trump filed the amended version on May 27. Saturday's ruling ends that second attempt.

An announced appeal, a silent White House, and an open question on legal fees

A spokesman for Trump's legal team said the president would appeal; but no filing has been confirmed as of publication, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is also undecided whether the defendants will move to recover their legal costs: reporting on the ruling notes the judge had not decided the question of attorneys' fees, with the Journal given a window to pursue them.

How a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit would assess Gayles's actual-malice analysis remains untested. And while the courthouse chapter is closed, the political fight around the Epstein files, the disclosures Congress continues to extract from the late financier's estate, moves on independently of this case.

The highest wall in American media law just held; twice

The actual-malice rule is the load-bearing wall of American press freedom: without it, any public official could bankrupt a newsroom by suing over an unfavorable story. Gayles made the point explicitly, rejecting Trump's argument that the Journal should have withheld its story once he denied writing the letter: “Were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press.”

The ruling landed as the latest defeat in Trump's wider legal campaign against the press, a campaign that has also produced a refiled $15 billion suit against The New York Times, a $16 million settlement from Paramount over “60 Minutes” coverage, a $15 million settlement from ABC, and subpoenas served on New York Times reporters. For press-freedom advocates, Saturday's order is vindication of the doctrine; for Trump's supporters, it is another ruling from a bench they consider hostile, Gayles was appointed by President Barack Obama, a fact both sides now cite. The pattern fits the broader record of the president's confrontations with critical institutions.

How the actual-malice test ended this case before any trial began

Defamation cases against public figures are usually lost or won at the pleading stage, long before a jury is empaneled, and this one was lost twice for the same reason. Actual malice is a state-of-mind test: Trump had to allege facts suggesting the reporters knew the story was false or seriously doubted its truth. Instead, the complaint attacked the article's conclusions, arguing, among other things, that it falsely represented Trump as having drawn the naked woman's figure and signed “Donald” below her waist in a way “mimicking pubic hair.” But pleading that an article was wrong is not pleading that the Journal knew it was wrong, and Gayles treated that gap as fatal.

The irony now hanging over the case is that the document at its center is no longer a matter of competing claims: Congress subpoenaed the records from Epstein's estate and released the letter publicly, and the July 2025 Journal article had included Trump's own denial, his assertion that the letter was “a fake thing”, alongside his threat to sue. A newsroom that publishes the denial, seeks comment before publication, and stands behind a documented investigation is, in the eyes of the actual-malice doctrine, the opposite of reckless. The background to the files at the heart of the dispute is traced in the Bureau's earlier reporting on the Epstein documents releases.

What this ruling changes for Trump's war on the press

First, precedent: the order becomes ammunition in every pending media suit Trump has filed, most directly the refiled $15 billion case against The New York Times, where the same actual-malice bar awaits. Second, cost: if Dow Jones moves for attorneys' fees, and the reporting indicates a 30-day window, the message to future plaintiffs is that even a president pays for losing a press suit twice.

Third, strategy: the suits have always served a dual purpose, legal and political; they punish coverage while signaling to other newsrooms that scrutiny carries a price tag. A with-prejudice dismissal blunts the legal prong but leaves the political one intact; the base hears “hostile judge,” not “failed pleading.” Fourth, the Epstein files themselves: the disclosures keep coming through Congress regardless of this ruling, and each release re-anchors public attention on the documents rather than the lawsuit about them. The political stakes extend beyond the courtroom; what Michigan could decide about the rest of his presidency now includes how voters read a legal record of defeats.

What does “dismissed with prejudice” actually mean?

“With prejudice” is the court's way of saying the same claims can never be refiled in this court; the April dismissal, by contrast, was without prejudice and came with an invitation to amend. What remains open: an appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, which Trump's legal team has said he will pursue; a possible motion by Dow Jones for attorneys' fees; and the parallel track of Trump's other media litigation, where the same actual-malice standard will decide the refiled Times case.

None of this touches the underlying reporting, which stands; and which Congress has since corroborated in part by publishing the letter itself. The Bureau will track the appeal filing and any fee motion as they develop.