President Donald Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch and publisher Dow Jones & Co., as well as two reporters, after the paper published an article stating that Trump sent a letter to financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 that included a lewd drawing and birthday wishes containing sexual innuendo. Two years later, in 2005, police began investigating Epstein, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges involving underage girls. He was arrested again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges involving allegations that dated back to the early 2000s. He died in prison later that same year.
In a post to his Truth Social account, Trump described The Wall Street Journal article as "false, malicious, and defamatory" because "the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE" — something Trump said he also told Murdoch and Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker when contacted by the paper prior to publication.
Trump noted in a separate Truth Social post, "The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don't draw pictures."
In response to the story, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated on X, "WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don't even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document they're basing their ENTIRE fake story on."
The White House has since announced it is removing The Wall Street Journal from the pool of reporters covering Trump's upcoming trip to Scotland.
The lawsuit, which seeks more than $10 billion in damages, alleges the letter and drawing do not exist and accuses The Wall Street Journal of "glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting."
The Wall Street Journal stands by its story. "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit," a Dow Jones & Co. spokeswoman said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that it saw the letter and drawing in question and noted that it was accompanied by other birthday wishes sent by friends and collected by a close Epstein associate, all of which were reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice during its investigation of Epstein. Despite Trump's claims that he does not draw pictures, other articles from multiple publications note that several pictures drawn by Trump were found to have been auctioned off for charity, which may support the paper's claim that it believes the letter and drawing to be authentic.
In his Truth Social post, Trump cited other recent lawsuits against major media outlets, such as ABC and CBS/60 Minutes. He claimed settlements in those cases as wins, but it is unclear exactly why those cases were settled. The CBS case, in particular, did not involve any admission of wrongdoing by the network or the program, while ABC did not admit legal liability but issued a statement regretting claims that "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos made during a March 10, 2024 interview with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace.
There are several reasons a publication might choose to settle a defamation lawsuit. Some – like a desire to avoid the prolonged expense of litigation — are more business related. Other times, a publication might want to avoid any chance of a multimillion-dollar verdict.
Such verdicts, while financially damaging, are rare. The First Amendment protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press make it exceedingly difficult for a public official and public figure like Trump to win a defamation lawsuit. This is because of a high legal threshold known as "actual malice."
Now that he has filed a lawsuit, Trump will likely have a chance to probe at The Wall Street Journal's newsgathering — including internal conversations — to see how it verified its information. The actual malice standard would require Trump to show that the paper's reporters and editors believed the letter to be fake or that they recklessly disregarded the possibility that the letter doesn't exist or is false.
Courts rarely find that actual malice exists. One case where a court did find the existence of actual malice occurred when reporters relied on an unverified document that they had reason to believe didn't even exist.
But The Wall Street Journal reporters claim that they have seen the letter among other documents in an album compiled by Epstein's friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently in federal prison for child sex trafficking and other offenses related to Epstein's activities. Even if the Trump letter and drawing turn out to be false, The Wall Street Journal may claim that it had every reason to believe — and did believe — that the letter and drawing were authentic, particularly if the paper saw it alongside other well wishes to Epstein and with independent verification that it was from Trump. The public existence of other pictures that Trump has drawn not only refutes Trump's claim denying that he draws pictures at all but also strengthens The Wall Street Journal's claim that it believes the letter and drawing are real.
This alone is probably enough to protect The Wall Street Journal in a defamation lawsuit, as courts rarely find that actual malice exists absent "smoking gun" type documentation that an article was published despite the existence of serious doubts or actual knowledge about whether it was accurate or not.
This article was published by Freedom Forum.
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