\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s legal team has refiled its lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal story alleging that he had sent a \u201cbawdy\u201d letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, after a Florida judge had dismissed the case last month.<\/p>\n
The move restarts a bombshell case that pits the US president against one of his key media allies, Rupert Murdoch.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Trump\u2019s legal team called the case, which also names the Murdoch-owned Journal publisher Dow Jones and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, a \u201cpowerhouse lawsuit\u201d and said: \u201cThe President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April, Judge Darrin P Gayles said that Trump\u2019s team had not adequately argued that the Journal\u2019s July 2025 publication was done with actual malice, meaning those responsible for the story published it despite knowing it was false or highly likely to be false. But he dismissed the case \u201cwithout prejudice\u201d and gave Trump time to refile the case with new evidence provided.<\/p>\n
In his ruling, Gayles argued that there was significant evidence that the Journal sought to determine whether the letter \u2013 featuring a drawing of a naked woman\u2019s torso around an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein \u2013 was genuine, and that the fact that Trump claimed it was fake did not mean that the Journal acted \u201cwith serious doubts\u201d about the story.<\/p>\n
The new lawsuit, which is seven pages longer than the original, continues to claim that the letter to Epstein does not exist. \u201cThe reason for those failures is that Defendants did not have access to any such letter when the Article was published, which is a fact because no authentic letter or drawing exists,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Lawyers for Donald Trump have said the card released by lawmakers investigating the Jeffrey Epstein case was fake.<\/span> Illustration: Reuters<\/p>\n The letter was released by the House oversight committee in September after it was provided by Epstein\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n The lawsuit claimed that Murdoch told Trump, \u201cI will handle it,\u201d when the president called him and told him the story was untrue \u2013 \u201cwhich President Trump reasonably interpreted as meaning that Murdoch believed President Trump, and that the article would not be published\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s legal team also cited comments made by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who said she did not recall the letter. (The Journal\u2019s original story noted that Maxwell \u201cdidn\u2019t respond to a letter requesting an interview sent to her in prison\u201d.)<\/p>\n \u201cOf the two surviving individuals who could substantiate whether President Trump had submitted a birthday letter, one person, President Trump, vehemently denied the existence of the alleged letter, and the other person has testified to a federal official that she had no knowledge of it,\u201d the complaint alleges. \u201cDefendants Safdar, Palazzolo, Dow Jones, and News Corp either knew these facts, or deliberately avoided investigating such information, while nevertheless publishing the false, malicious, and defamatory Article.\u201d<\/p>\n The amended complaint includes the allegation that the Journal intentionally omitted Trump\u2019s denial of the letter \u2013 though the original story noted that \u201cTrump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, in February 1997. <\/span> Photograph: Davidoff Studios Photography\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s legal team had sought to conduct a limited amount of discovery to produce evidence of actual malice before filing its revised lawsuit \u2013 but Gayles recently denied that request, arguing that it was improper and \u201ccontravenes the purpose behind the actual malice standard\u201d.<\/p>\n The lawsuit asks for $10bn in compensation, though it\u2019s unclear what that number is based on.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Dow Jones has been contacted for comment about the revised lawsuit.<\/p>\n For years, in and out of office, Trump has waged legal battles against media companies he dislikes. While he won settlements in cases against CBS and ABC News for tens of millions of dollars, earmarked for his future presidential library, he still has outstanding lawsuits against the New York Times and the BBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump\u2019s legal team has refiled its lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal story alleging that he had sent a \u201cbawdy\u201d letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, after a Florida judge had dismissed the case last month. The move restarts a bombshell case that pits the US president against one of his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[4788,1038,964,3703,3289,24629,293,526,81,24630],"class_list":{"0":"post-49843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-10bn","9":"tag-alleged","10":"tag-donald","11":"tag-epstein","12":"tag-lawsuit","13":"tag-refiles","14":"tag-report","15":"tag-ties","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-wsj"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49843","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=49843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}