US President Donald Trump has sued media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for defamation, claiming that the publication fraudulently connected him to convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein in a contentious birthday letter. The lawsuit is worth $10 billion.
Days after WSJ revealed that Trump, a real estate tycoon at the time, had allegedly sent Epstein a provocative birthday greeting in 2003, the lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Miami. According to the story, the note had Trump’s stylized signature, a hand-drawn image of a nude woman, and a reference to a shared “secret.”
The 79-year-old Trump, who is running for reelection, has strongly refuted the allegations. He called the birthday note “wholly fake” and the story a “scam,” claiming that he did not write the note or create the image it included.
Trump said in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, that the Journal and its head editor, Emma Tucker, were disseminating misleading information even after being told the letter was not real.
Throughout my life, I have never written a picture. “I don’t draw women,” he declared. “I don’t speak that language. It’s not what I said.
The lawsuit puts more political pressure on the president, who is already under fire for his previous relationships with Epstein. Despite the fact that the two were pictured together at events in the early 2000s, there has never been any concrete evidence linking Trump to Epstein’s illegal actions.
Trump’s fans were taken aback by the Journal article’s timing, which was released late Thursday. Many saw it as a deliberate attempt to harm his chances of winning reelection. His “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) supporters, many of whom think the Epstein case is a government cover-up, were further stoked by the report’s conspiracy theories.
Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the unsealing of grand jury testimony pertaining to Epstein’s federal indictment, seemingly in an effort to quell public indignation and regain control of the narrative. Normally, these testimonies are kept private, but Bondi contended in her court filing in New York that the “extensive public interest” in the case calls for openness.
Whether the judge will permit the release of grand jury evidence is still up in the air. Legal experts have indicated that even if the testimony is not sealed, it might not include any conclusive proof regarding the so-called “Epstein client list”—a name that has acquired popularity among right-wing media outlets and online forums.
The president’s demand for documents comes as Republican circles are growing increasingly irate, with some accusing the Justice Department of protecting prominent figures who are supposedly associated with Epstein.
While awaiting trial on allegations of sex trafficking young girls, Epstein, a billionaire with connections to Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew of Britain, passed away in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. Despite conspiracy rumors that he was murdered to stop negative revelations, his death was officially declared a suicide.
No “client list” exists, Bondi said in a July memo, seemingly to settle the dispute. But the recent WSJ report has sparked a renewed interest in the topic, with opponents charging Murdoch’s publication with politically driven journalism.
According to legal experts, Trump’s defamation lawsuit has a good chance of success because US defamation law requires proof of genuine malice. They do, however, recognize the lawsuit’s political value in uniting Trump’s followers and countering storylines that undermine his authority.
