Judge Dismisses Trump’s Wall Street Journal Lawsuit With Prejudice

A federal judge rejected Trump’s defamation claims over a Wall Street Journal report about an alleged Jeffrey Epstein birthday letter, finding he had not shown actual malice.

A federal judge in Miami dismissed President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media executive Rupert Murdoch with prejudice on Saturday, October 31, 2026, ending the case at the trial-court level unless Trump successfully appeals.

U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that Trump had not shown that the defendants made defamatory statements with “actual malice,” according to the Associated Press. Reuters independently reported the dismissal and its with-prejudice status, citing a court filing. That designation prevents Trump from trying to repair the complaint again in the same case, although it does not eliminate his right to seek appellate review.

What the lawsuit challenged

The dispute concerned a Journal report about a letter that the newspaper said bore Trump’s name and appeared in an album assembled for financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The article described the letter as sexually suggestive. Trump denied writing it and sued the Journal, Murdoch and other defendants, seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Saturday’s ruling addresses whether Trump’s defamation claims met the legal requirements for proceeding; it is not a judicial finding that Trump wrote the reported letter. The initial reports on the decision did not describe the judge as resolving the document’s authenticity. They focused instead on the failure to establish actual malice, the demanding fault standard public officials must meet in U.S. defamation cases.

Why actual malice mattered

Under the constitutional standard for a public-official defamation claim, a plaintiff must show that a publisher knew a challenged statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. The standard is more demanding than proving an ordinary reporting error. The Associated Press said Gayles concluded that Trump had not proved the defendants published with that required state of mind.

The ruling is the latest turn in litigation Trump began after the Journal’s Epstein-related report. On April 13, Gayles dismissed an earlier complaint but gave Trump an opportunity to amend it. At that stage, the judge said factual questions about whether Trump authored the letter or was Epstein’s friend could not be decided on a dismissal motion. Trump then pursued a revised complaint. The reported letter had also been released publicly after Congress subpoenaed records from Epstein’s estate.

Saturday’s with-prejudice dismissal is therefore a material new development. Unlike the April order, it does not invite Trump to submit another version of his claims. The district-court litigation is closed unless post-judgment proceedings change the result, while the separate question of an appeal remains available under federal procedure.

What remains unresolved

The dismissal does not settle the broader public debate surrounding Epstein records, nor does it determine every factual dispute raised by the Journal article. It resolves Trump’s civil claims against these defendants under the governing defamation standard. Any appeal would ask a higher court to review the legal basis for Gayles’ decision rather than restart the case automatically.

Initial reports from the Associated Press, Reuters and CNBC did not include a new public response from Trump or the Wall Street Journal to Saturday’s ruling. Trump can appeal the judgment; no notice of appeal was identified in those first reports. The case was heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Sources and image credit

What the lawsuit challenged

Why actual malice mattered