\n<\/p>\n
\n\tPresident Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal<\/em> for defamation over a report detailing a 2003 letter from him to Jeffrey Epstein in which he wrote that they share a \u201cwonderful secret.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWith the lawsuit, filed on Friday in Florida federal court, the Journal<\/em> becomes the latest media outlet targeted by Trump for adversarial reporting, joining ABC News and CBS News. It sets the stage for another legal battle in which media\u2019s incentives to stay out of Trump\u2019s crosshairs by settling will be questioned, this time featuring Journal<\/em> parent Dow Jones & Company., owned by close Trump ally Rupert Murdoch.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOn Thursday, the Journal<\/em> reported that Epstein was sent a bawdy letter signed by Trump containing several lines of typewritten text. Inside the outline of a naked woman framing the text was an imaginary conversation between the two written in the third person.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cVoice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,\u201d the note began.<\/p>\n \n\tDonald: Yes, there is, but I won\u2019t tell you what it is.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tJeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tDonald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tJeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tDonald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tJeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tTrump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday \u2014 and may every day be another wonderful secret.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThe report comes amid a firestorm over the so-called Epstein files in which Trump\u2019s conservative base is pushing for the Justice Department, which has maintained that there isn\u2019t a \u201cclient list\u201d of high-profile people who participated in Epstein\u2019s trafficking of young girls, to release more information on the documents. On Wednesday, he lashed out at his own supporters for criticizing his administration\u2019s decision not to release more material.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTrump has challenged the authenticity of the letter in the Journal<\/em>\u2018s story. In an interview with the publication, he denied writing it or drawing the picture. \u201cThis is not me. This is a fake thing. It\u2019s a fake Wall Street Journal story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI never wrote a picture in my life. I don\u2019t draw pictures of women,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not my language. It\u2019s not my words.\u201d Trump stressed, \u201cI\u2019m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe story didn\u2019t include an image of the letter or name its custodian. In response, Vice President JD Vance suggested the Journal falsified the reporting. \u201cWhere is this letter?\u201d he wrote in a Thursday post on X. \u201cWould you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe lawsuit comes on the heels of Paramount Global agreeing to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit from Trump, who sued over an October interview that\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0conducted with Kamala Harris. The lawsuit was considered frivolous by most legal observers, but a settlement provided a pathway to regulatory approval of Paramount\u2019s sink-or-swim merger with Skydance. <\/p>\n \n\tMedia execs have taken notice of Trump\u2019s criticism of what conservatives consider biased reporting. Jeff Bezos\u00a0revamped\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s opinion section to bring it more in line with Rupert Murdoch\u2019s\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>; Bob Iger allowed\u00a0ABC News\u2019 settlement\u00a0of a defamation lawsuit from Trump,\u00a0reported\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>;\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0<\/em>owner Patrick Soon-Shiong\u00a0shifted\u00a0the paper\u2019s strategy to increasingly platform conservative views.<\/p>\n \n\tMore to come.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over a report detailing a 2003 letter from him to Jeffrey Epstein in which he wrote that they share a \u201cwonderful secret.\u201d\u00a0 With the lawsuit, filed on Friday in Florida federal court, the Journal becomes the latest media outlet targeted by Trump for adversarial reporting,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4718,3703,4319,293,1276,1983,81,2339],"class_list":{"0":"post-11366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-defamation","9":"tag-epstein","10":"tag-journal","11":"tag-report","12":"tag-street","13":"tag-sues","14":"tag-trump","15":"tag-wall"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}