Judge Tosses Trump's $10B Suit Meant to Muzzle the Press

A federal judge in Miami on Saturday threw out President Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, telling the most powerful man in the country he was "grasping at straws." U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the suit with prejudice. That means it can't be refiled. It's over, permanently.

The suit targeted a story about a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that the Journal said bore Trump's name, reportedly included in a 2003 album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump sued the paper, its parent companies, Murdoch and two reporters in July 2025. His complaint accused them of having "knowingly and recklessly" published "numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements."

Who Has the Power

Here's what a sitting president did with the machinery of the state and his own fortune: he sued a newspaper over a story he didn't like. Legal analysts who spoke with CNN said they couldn't recall another instance of a sitting president suing a news outlet over a story. The $10 billion figure wasn't a measure of damages. It was a threat.

The judge wasn't impressed. Gayles ruled that Trump failed to plausibly allege "actual malice," the legal standard from the Supreme Court's 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which requires proof that a outlet knowingly published something false or showed reckless disregard for the truth. The allegations, Gayles wrote, were "conclusory, vague, sometimes inconsistent with the Article, and often irrelevant." He said the suit had tried to "manufacture" flaws in the Journal's investigative reporting.

Trump's argument was breathtaking in its simplicity: he denied writing the letter, so the paper should have sat on the story. Gayles shut that down. "Were that the law, any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press," the judge wrote.

What They're Calling "Order"

This wasn't a one-off. The base record shows a pattern. Trump has a $15 billion defamation case against The New York Times over its coverage of his 2024 campaign. He sued the BBC for $10 billion over its editing of his January 6, 2021, speech. He sued Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling company, and The Des Moines Register over a poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris; a judge dismissed that suit with prejudice in September. CNN, MS NOW and Politico are now suing him for restored access after he banished them from the White House in mid-September.

Legal experts have deemed these lawsuits frivolous and full of holes. But they warn that winning may be beside the point: the publicity and the threat of protracted litigation can pressure news outlets and chill aggressive reporting. That's the real function. Not justice. Intimidation, with a courthouse as the stage.

The Courts, The Owners, and the Limits

Don't mistake this for a clean victory. A judge enforced a 62-year-old precedent and a newspaper owned by a media mogul survived. The Journal's parent company, Dow Jones, said only: "We're pleased with the court's decision." The paper's lawyers had the resources to fight a president for more than a year. A zine collective, a local reporter or an independent pollster without a corporate legal department might not have lasted that long. Selzer, notably, got dragged through litigation for months over a poll.

The White House, asked for comment, referred CNN to Trump's personal lawyers. Trump and the White House maintain the card is a fake and that the signature isn't his, even though the House Oversight Committee publicly released it after getting it from the Epstein estate. Democrats compiled documents where Trump signed just his first name over the years, and the signatures look very similar to the one on the card. Ghislaine Maxwell, who assembled the birthday book, told then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche she couldn't remember whether Trump contributed.

The case that exposed a billionaire's friend circle to daylight got dismissed by a federal judge. The judiciary did its job here. But a power that can file suit after suit, hoping something sticks or someone blinks, isn't done. It just lost one round.