By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 28 May 2026 09:02 AM EDT
President Donald Trump has renewed his legal fight against The Wall Street Journal, filing a revised defamation lawsuit that accuses the newspaper and its parent companies of knowingly publishing false claims tying him to a birthday letter sent to Jeffrey Epstein.
The updated complaint was filed in federal court in Miami after U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed Trump’s earlier lawsuit, ruling it failed to adequately establish “actual malice”—the legal threshold public figures must meet in defamation cases.
Gayles had given Trump until May 27 to submit a revised filing.
At the center of the dispute is a July Wall Street Journal report describing a letter allegedly included in a book compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper stated the note carried Trump’s name and featured text inside the outline of a naked woman, with the message: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” signed as “Donald.”
Trump has repeatedly denied authoring the letter and threatened legal action shortly after the article was published. His revised lawsuit claims the defendants ignored those denials and acted with reckless disregard for the truth when publishing the story.
The complaint again seeks billions of dollars in damages.
Trump originally sued Dow Jones, News Corp, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, and two WSJ reporters. Lawyers for the defendants previously urged the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the Journal’s reporting was accurate and that a suggestive birthday message to a friend would not be defamatory. They also contended Trump failed to demonstrate anyone acted with knowledge of false information.
Following Gayles’ dismissal of the initial lawsuit, Trump vowed on social media to continue pursuing the case, stating it was “not a termination, it is a suggested re-filing” and calling the lawsuit a “powerful case.”
Trump’s legal team later requested permission from the court to obtain limited evidence from the defendants to establish their state of mind when the article was published. Gayles denied that request.
