Judge Dismisses Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against The Wall Street Journal

U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles issued the ruling in Miami. The dismissal was entered with prejudice, a disposition that permanently ends the case at the trial-court level. The supplied reporting does not establish whether an appeal was filed or remains possible.

The lawsuit challenged Wall Street Journal reporting about an alleged 2003 message or entry connected to Epstein. The supplied sources variously describe the material as a birthday letter, card or birthday-book entry, and say it was purportedly written and signed by Trump. The differing descriptions do not resolve the item’s precise format.

The court found that Trump had not sufficiently shown or pleaded that the defendants acted with actual malice, a required element of the defamation claim. In its account of the ruling, the South China Morning Post said the lawsuit attempted to manufacture flaws in the newspaper’s reporting, while PBS NewsHour and The Hollywood Reporter also described the court as finding that actual malice had not been established.

Variety reported that the dismissal was the second involving the lawsuit, a characterization supported only by that publication among the supplied reports. Al Jazeera separately reported that the case sought $10 billion; that amount was not independently corroborated in the available material.

Reports describing the ruling were published on or around October 31, 2026. They agree on the dismissal and the court’s actual-malice finding, but the available material leaves open the exact date of the ruling itself and the precise form of the Epstein-related item.