Judge dismisses Trump's lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday book

A US judge has thrown out President Donald Trump's $10bn (£7.4bn) lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, ruling the suit was "grasping at straws".

Trump had sued the media outlet's parent company Dow Jones and its leader Rupert Murdoch last year after it reported on a letter allegedly written by Trump to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as part of a birthday book in 2003, before Epstein was charged with sex crimes.

Trump has denied writing or signing the letter, which included suggestive language and a drawing of the outline of a woman's body.

Judge Darrin Gayles threw out the case, finding the suit runs counter to the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press.

Gayles had already once dismissed the defamation lawsuit, which sought $20 billion in damages. Trump's team refiled the suit seeking $10 billion, and this time, the judge threw out the case "with prejudice," meaning the suit cannot be filed again.

The news outlet's story about Epstein's 50th birthday book, external - and the letter with Trump's name - came as the Trump administration battled intense bipartisan criticism over the summer for its handling of Epstein documents.

Trump had said the newspaper had slandered him and violated libel laws in publishing the article.

In his 20-page ruling, Gayles noted the paper's "thoughtful and detailed ​investigation" that led to the story and said the lawsuit was "grasping at ‌straws" to "manufacture flaws" in their work.

The judge wrote that Trump's legal team did not prove that the defendants made defamatory statements with "actual malice", which the law requires be proven.

Actual malice is high bar to meet, as it requires proof that the defendant knew the defamatory statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true or not.

Trump alleged that the letter obtained and released by the Journal, which features his signature at the bottom, was "fake" and that the defendants devised the story in order to defame him.

Trump's legal team had argued that because Trump denied writing the letter when contacted by the Journal, the paper should have "disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story", Gayles wrote.

"But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment," Gayles wrote.

If that were the law, he wrote, then "any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press—a result that flies in the face of the 'American privilege to speak one's mind'".

According to the Wall Street Journal story, a letter bearing Trump's name "contained several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker".

It reportedly contained a joking reference that "enigmas never age" and allegedly ended with the words: "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret".