A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, handing the US president a legal setback in one of several cases he has pursued against major media organizations over coverage he says was false or unfair. The ruling leaves Trump free to file an amended complaint, but it rejects the case in its current form.
The lawsuit centered on a Wall Street Journal report about a birthday card linked to Jeffrey Epstein that allegedly carried Trump’s signature. Trump argued that the material was fake and said the article damaged his reputation. Judge Darrin P. Gayles, however, said the complaint failed to satisfy the demanding legal standard that public figures must meet in defamation cases.
In his ruling, Gayles said Trump had not plausibly shown “actual malice,” the standard requiring proof that a publisher either knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. The judge also noted that the newspaper sought Trump’s response before publication and included his denial in its reporting, a factor that weighed against the claim that the paper acted with deliberate wrongdoing.
The court did not make a final determination on whether the underlying article was true. Instead, the ruling focused on the weakness of Trump’s legal argument as filed. Gayles gave him until April 27 to submit a revised complaint, and Trump later said publicly that he intends to do so.
Dow Jones, the newspaper’s parent company, welcomed the decision and defended the paper’s journalism, saying it stood behind the reliability and accuracy of the reporting. The case has drawn wider attention because it fits into a broader pattern of legal action by Trump against news organizations, a strategy that critics say could have a chilling effect on press freedom and critical reporting.
The dismissed lawsuit was tied to the long-running controversy surrounding Epstein, whose case has remained politically explosive and the subject of intense public scrutiny. Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has repeatedly rejected the authenticity of the material at the center of the dispute. For now, the judge’s decision marks a clear legal defeat, even if the broader fight is not yet over.
