Trump's Lawsuit Against WSJ Over Report On Epstein Dismissed

Another day, another federal judge explains to President Donald Trump that the free press is protected by the U.S. Constitution, and he doesn’t get to ignore that part of the First Amendment just because the news makes him look and feel bad.

In July of last year, the Wall Street Journal published an article under the headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” WSJ reported that one letter included a crude and sexually suggestive note to Epstein, which House Democrats said was signed by Trump, who dealt with the report the way he does all such reports that make him look bad: by shouting “fake news” at everything that moves, and filing lawsuits that are likely to go nowhere.

According to the New York Times, Judge Darrin Gayles in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, on Monday, dismissed Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against WSJ’s parent company, News Corp, as well as its founder, Rupert Murdoch. Also named as defendants in the suit were Robert Thomson, News Corp’s chief executive; Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher; and two WSJ reporters.

In his decision, Gayles ruled that Trump had not “plausibly alleged” that the Journal published the article with “actual malice,” which the Times described as “a legal standard meaning that it knew what it was publishing was false or had acted with reckless disregard as to its accuracy.” Gayles dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning Trump can refile his claim in the future, which a spokesperson for the president’s legal team said he would do, referring to the complaint as a “powerhouse lawsuit.”

Last September, Trump also filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, four of its reporters, and a publishing company. That suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, accused the defendants of attempting to ruin his reputation as a businessman, undermine his 2024 presidential campaign, and “prejudice judges and juries against him in coverage of his campaign,” as NBC News reported. Judge Steven D. Merryday threw out the president’s original 85-page complaint that same month, essentially saying it was a rambling mess that jumped around from topic to topic, and was laden with “florid and enervating” nonsense, which, of course, describes the only way our president knows to communicate.

“A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” Merryday wrote in his decision, which prompted the administration to refile the suit that October, presumably, in a way that made it sound less like it came from Trump and more like it was filed by a sane person.

It’s also worth noting that, last month, a different federal judge ruled in favor of the Times after the outlet sued the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell over their freedom-of-the-press-defying policy that reporters cannot obtain or solicit any information, whether classified or unclassified, unless it is pre-approved by the Department of Defense — a policy every major media outlet rejected, prompting the administration to replace them in the press pool with disreputable right-wing bloggers and podcasters who would play ball.

It’s almost as if our current president isn’t the champion of free speech that he has purported himself to be. Go figure.

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Judge Dismisses Trump's Lawsuit Against WSJ Over Its Report On Jeffrey Epstein's Birthday Card was originally published on newsone.com