President Donald Trump has reopened a high-profile legal battle against The Wall Street Journal, its parent company News Corp, Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch, and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Low Palazzlo. The plaintiffs are demanding $10 billion for publishing false information to defame Trump.
The case centers around a WSJ article about a compilation by Ghislaine Maxwell for Jeffrey Epstein’s 2003 birthday, which reportedly contained a bawdy letter allegedly signed by Donald Trump.
Donald Trump lodges an amended complaint against The Wall Street Journal $10 billion suit
The letter, which Trump insisted is fake, was also the center of an older lawsuit that was dismissed by Judge Datrin Gayles in April because it did not adequately establish the legal standard of “actual malice”. However, the dismissal allowed for refiling – the clause which Trump used to reopen the case.
The amended lawsuit hinges on a comment that Ghislaine Maxwell made when talking to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, where she stated that she had no recollection of Trump submitting a letter, card, or note for Epstein’s birthday compilation.
The said letter is reported to contain a drawing of a naked woman with explicit copy to go along. The fact that the letter was published before Maxwell’s interview with Blanche in 2025 allows Trump’s team to claim that WSJ had deliberately ignored evidence to publish the article. This, the team hopes, meets the “malice” legal standards.
Trump has claimed that Rupert Murdoch had commented, “I will handle it,” when he had called to deny the allegations.
The reopened filing is part of Trump’s larger pattern of going after major media houses like ABC, CBS, The New York Times, and the BBC.
However, Trump’s documented friendship with Jeffrey Epstein adds further complexity to the case. Though Trump has repeatedly stated that he was not aware of Epstein’s criminality, his copious appearances in the Epstein files may raise suspicion.
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