A federal judge in Miami has dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media magnate Rupert Murdoch, ending — at least at this stage — a legal fight over the newspaper’s reporting on an alleged birthday letter linked to Jeffrey Epstein. US District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice on Saturday, October 31, ruling that Trump had not proved the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice.
The decision is the second time Gayles has thrown out the lawsuit this year. He first dismissed it in April, but allowed Trump to file an amended complaint, which was submitted in May. Saturday’s ruling closes that second attempt as well, and because the dismissal is with prejudice, Trump cannot simply refile the same claims in a new complaint, although an appeal remains a separate question that the ruling itself does not decide.
Key Takeaways
- Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami dismissed Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch with prejudice.
- The judge ruled Trump failed to prove the newspaper acted with actual malice, the legal standard that applies to defamation claims by public figures.
- The case centred on a Journal report about an alleged 2003 birthday letter bearing Trump’s name in an album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.
What the Judge Decided
At the heart of the ruling is the actual malice standard, set by the US Supreme Court in its landmark 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Under that standard, a public figure bringing a defamation claim must show that a publication either knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. Gayles ruled that Trump’s amended complaint fell short of that threshold.
According to reports of the ruling, Gayles wrote that the amended complaint fell short of pleading actual malice, and described the lawsuit as grasping at straws as it attempted to manufacture flaws in the Journal’s investigative reporting. That language matters because it goes beyond a narrow procedural point: the judge was saying the complaint, even after being rewritten, did not contain the kind of factual allegations that would allow a defamation case against a public figure to proceed.
A dismissal with prejudice is also significant in practical terms. When a case is dismissed with prejudice, it cannot be refiled in the same form, and the dismissal is treated as final for those claims. That is different from a dismissal without prejudice, which would leave the door open to a corrected filing. In this case, the earlier April dismissal had left that door open; Saturday’s ruling closed it.
The judge ruled that Trump had not proved the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice.
The Report at the Centre of the Case
The lawsuit arose from a Wall Street Journal story published in July 2025. The Journal reported that a sexually suggestive letter and drawing bearing Trump’s name were included in an album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper said the letter had been collected by Ghislaine Maxwell as part of that birthday album, years before Epstein was first arrested in 2006.
Trump denied writing the letter and sued the newspaper, its reporters and Murdoch, accusing them of having knowingly and recklessly published numerous false, defamatory and disparaging statements. The lawsuit alleged that the reporting caused overwhelming financial and reputational harm to the president.
The Journal’s reporting did not, on its own, settle whether the letter was authentic, and the court case was not a trial on that question. Defamation cases involving public figures turn first on what the plaintiff can plead and prove about the publisher’s state of mind, and Gayles ruled that Trump had not met that test in either version of his complaint.
- $10 billion: the damages sought in Trump’s lawsuit against the Journal and Murdoch
- July 2025: when the Journal published the report about the alleged 2003 birthday letter
- April 2026: when Gayles first dismissed the lawsuit, allowing an amended complaint
- October 31, 2026: when Gayles dismissed the amended lawsuit with prejudice
Why the Actual Malice Standard Matters Here
The actual malice standard exists precisely to make defamation claims by public figures difficult to win. The Supreme Court’s reasoning in Sullivan was that open debate about public officials requires breathing room, even when reporting turns out to be mistaken, unless the plaintiff can show knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.
That is why the judge’s focus was not simply on whether every detail in the Journal’s story was correct. The question before the court was whether Trump’s complaint alleged facts that, if proved, would show the newspaper published with actual malice. Gayles concluded it did not, in April and again after the amended complaint in May.
The ruling also fits a wider pattern of court decisions in cases involving the president and the press, where judges have tested claims strictly against the Sullivan standard. Those decisions do not endorse or condemn the underlying reporting; they decide whether a lawsuit can proceed under the demanding rules that govern defamation claims by public figures. That distinction is important for readers trying to understand what Saturday’s ruling does and does not mean.
What Happens Next
For now, the lawsuit as filed is over. Trump cannot file an amended version of the same suit, as he did after the April dismissal. Any further challenge would have to take a different legal form, such as an appeal, and no such step had been announced in the immediate reporting of the ruling.
The decision also arrives at a politically charged moment. The United States is days away from midterm elections, with record early voting in the US midterm elections already reported, and courts have been drawn into election-related disputes, including a case in which a judge barred the Trump administration from pressuring election officials ahead of the midterms. Against that background, a ruling about press freedom and defamation is likely to be read politically, even though its reasoning is legal rather than electoral.
Elsewhere, political accountability cases are also in the headlines, including India’s opposition bloc beginning public impeachment proceedings against its chief election commissioner. The common thread is not the substance of each case, but the way courts and formal proceedings are being used to test claims made in public life — and the high bar those tests set.
What to Watch Next
What to watch next is simply what the article has already set out: whether Trump appeals the dismissal, whether the Journal or Murdoch respond publicly to the ruling, and whether any further legal action is filed in a different form. Until then, the verified picture remains the one in the ruling itself: a $10 billion defamation lawsuit dismissed with prejudice, on the ground that the amended complaint failed to plead actual malice.