Donald Trump sued Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters on Friday over an explosive report that the president wrote a 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein that contained suggestive language. Trump claims the Wall Street Journal and its journalists defamed him and has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Trump is seeking “not less than $10 billion,” the same amount of damages he sought in his initial lawsuit against CBS over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview.
“We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is, The Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case.”
In an interview with the paper, the president denied writing the letter to the disgraced financier. “This is not me,” Trump said. “This is a fake thing.”
The lawsuit repeats the claim that the letter is “a fake,” notes that it was not published along with the story, and says the article does not offer “any proof that President Trump has anything to do with it.”
According to the Wall Street Journal story by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, the letter was part of a birthday album compiled by Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, filled with messages from several prominent people, including attorney Alan Dershowitz and former Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner. The paper reported that Trump’s 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. The letter concludes: ‘Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.’”
The letter reportedly predated Epstein’s 2019 arrest for alleged sex crimes involving minors. It also would have been written five years before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14.
Epstein died in his jail cell in 2019, with a medical examiner ruling the cause was suicide by hanging. However, his death has inspired a wave of conspiracy theories.
After the Wall Street Journal published its story on Thursday, Trump wrote on social media, “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!”
Trump, who was friendly with Epstein for years before the pair had what he described as a “falling out,” has been under pressure from his base of supporters to release all documents related to the Epstein investigation. He has so far resisted those calls, but on Thursday on social media he announced that he was telling Attorney General Pam Bondi “to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” related to the Epstein case.
The Wall Street Journal isn’t the only media organization to face legal action from the president. Trump has recently sued several media institutions, including ABC News and CBS News, reaching multimillion-dollar settlements with both.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
variety.com
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