A federal judge on Saturday dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against media baron Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal over the newspaper's reporting on a purported 50th birthday letter to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami ruled that Trump again failed to plausibly allege that the newspaper and other defendants acted with actual malice when they published the story in July 2025.
"Grasping at straws, the Amended Complaint attempts to manufacture flaws with the investigation," Gayles wrote in the 20-page ruling, which dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice.
The judge said the Journal had conducted a "thoughtful and detailed investigation" and rejected Trump's argument that the newspaper should not have published the story after he denied writing the letter.
Gayles did not determine whether Trump actually authored the disputed letter.
The ruling comes roughly six months after the court first dismissed the $10 billion lawsuit against Murdoch and the newspaper, which he owns.
By dismissing the suit with prejudice, Trump cannot file another amended version of the lawsuit in the district court. However, a spokesman for Trump's legal team told CNBC on Saturday that the president plans to appeal the ruling.
"President Trump will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants. The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions," the spokesman said in a statement.
Spokespeople or legal representatives for the Journal and Murdoch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judge Gayles, as he did when dismissing the suit for the first time, noted Trump, who has adamantly denied sending the letter to his then-friend Epstein in 2003, had "not plausibly alleged that the Defendants published the Article with actual malice."
"As with his first attempt, he has failed," Gayles' Saturday ruling reads. "Grasping at straws, the Amended Complaint attempts to manufacture flaws with the investigation."
Plaintiffs who are public figures like Trump must show that a defendant acted with actual malice when making allegedly defamatory statements, according to legal precedent.
The amended lawsuit contained new details and claims, including that Murdoch told Trump "I will handle it" on a phone call about an article describing a birthday letter to Epstein that allegedly bore Trump's signature, Newsweek previously reported.
Gayles rejected each of Trump's arguments in the amended complaint, including that the Journal did not adequately investigate the letter, omitted relevant details, and published the letter after the president and his representatives denied it was authentic.
Gayles said the last argument would effectively allow public figures to block unfavorable reporting, which "runs afoul of the First Amendment" that protects freedom of speech and the press.
The Saturday ruling is the latest setback in litigation between Trump and the media. A different federal judge on Oct. 22 ordered Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11.
The Journal published an article on July 17, 2025, saying a letter bearing Trump's signature was included in an album of letters Epstein was giving for his 50th birthday. The article said Trump sent the letter at the request of Epstein's close friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who two decades later was convicted of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
The Journal noted that the letter "contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker."
"A pair of small arcs denotes the woman's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair," Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo said in the article.
"The letter concludes: 'Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,'" they wrote.
Trump angrily denied writing the letter, saying, "This is not me. This is a fake thing."'
"I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women," the president said at the time.
