A federal judge in Miami on Saturday threw out Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, ruling that the president did not prove the defendants published defamatory statements with actual malice. U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled. The dismissal is permanent and incontrovertible.

Gayles did not soften his language. In his ruling, he said the president had been “grasping at straws,” and that the lawsuit had attempted to “manufacture” flaws in the Journal’s investigative reporting. For a president who has spent much of his second term fighting news organizations, it was a hard loss delivered in a federal courtroom.

The fight began with a story the Journal published last year. According to the paper, the article described a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that bore Trump’s name. The letter was included in a 2003 album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. The album was reportedly collected by Ghislaine Maxwell, the disgraced British socialite, years before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. Epstein and Trump later had a falling-out.

The letter, as the paper described it, includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman. It ends with the line, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denied writing it. He called the story “false, malicious, and defamatory,” and he described the reporting as malicious.

Trump’s lawsuit was filed in federal court in Miami. It accused the paper and its reporters of having “knowingly and recklessly” published “numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements.” The suit claimed those statements caused “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” to the president.

Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. That history is the backdrop to a legal fight that has turned on a single question: whether the newspaper knew, or recklessly disregarded, that its story was false.

This was not the first time Gayles had weighed the case. He dismissed the suit in April, saying Trump had failed to argue that the article was published with the intent to be malicious. The judge did not close the door completely. He gave the president a chance to file an amended complaint, and Trump did so in May.

Saturday’s ruling found the amended version fell short. Gayles relied on the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. That ruling made it harder for public figures to win libel lawsuits. It requires proof that a media outlet knowingly published something false or showed reckless disregard for the truth.

Why the Judge Found the Malice Claim Wanting

The core of the decision rests on the actual malice standard. Gayles concluded that the complaint did not plead it adequately, and he was blunt about why.

“The Amended Complaint falls short of pleading actual malice,” Gayles wrote. “Indeed, the allegations regarding malice are conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article, and often irrelevant to whether Defendants knew or should have known that the statements in the Article were purportedly false.”

That language goes straight at the lawsuit’s structure. The judge said the allegations were conclusory, meaning they asserted malice without supplying the facts to back it up. He also said some were inconsistent with the article itself.

The judge also pointed to how the Journal handled Trump’s denial. The story, he wrote, did not ignore or minimize it. “Rather, it informed readers that President Trump decried the Letter as a fake and denied writing it.” For a plaintiff arguing that a newspaper deliberately misled its readers, that finding removed a central piece of the argument. Gayles added that several other allegations in the lawsuit did not have merit.

Those findings matter beyond this one case. A public figure who sues over critical coverage has to clear a high bar, and a court has now said that the bar was not met on these facts. The dismissal with prejudice means Trump cannot simply return with the same claims and hope for a different result.

A Wider Pattern of Clashes With the Press

The lawsuit against the Journal is one of several legal fights the president is waging against news organizations. Trump has been involved in lawsuits with other major outlets and wire services during his second term. Several news organizations are also suing him for restored access after he barred them from the White House in mid-September.

Trump has a long record of attacking reporters and outlets whose coverage he dislikes. He has frequently called them “fake news” and insulted their journalists by name. The Journal case shows how those public fights can move from social posts and press gaggles into federal court, where the rules are different and the burden of proof is high.

The ruling also lands at a sensitive moment for the Epstein story, which continues to draw attention because of the convicted and accused figures connected to it. The letter at the center of this case is one of many threads in that broader saga. Gayles did not rule on whether the letter is authentic. He ruled that Trump had not met the legal standard needed to win a defamation claim over the Journal’s reporting.

The decision is a clear reminder of how difficult it is to win a libel case as a public figure in the United States. Under the 1964 standard, a plaintiff must show more than that a story was wrong or damaging. The plaintiff must show the publisher knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Gayles found that the president’s filings did not get there.

For the Journal and Murdoch, the outcome removes a multibillion-dollar threat. For Trump, it is another courtroom setback in a second term defined by confrontation with the press. Whether he pursues any further step is not addressed in the ruling. What is settled is that this particular claim, as pleaded, is over, and it cannot be brought again.