President Donald Trump has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal, claiming the publication falsely reported he sent a bawdy letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
President Donald Trump took legal action on Friday against media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, following the publication of an article in The Wall Street Journal alleging that Trump sent a provocative letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump, who has strongly denied penning the letter, is demanding damages amounting to no less than $10 billion in his defamation lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida’s federal court, names as defendants Murdoch, News Corp’s CEO Robert Thomson, The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., and the two reporters behind the article published on Thursday evening.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones responded with a statement to CNBC, asserting their confidence in the robustness and accuracy of their reporting and expressing an intent to vigorously contest the lawsuit.
This legal move aligns with mounting pressure on Trump to persuade the Justice Department to disclose its investigative files about Epstein, who committed suicide in August 2019 while facing federal child sex trafficking charges.
The contested article stated that the alleged letter from Trump to Epstein was among documentation reviewed by criminal investigators in the process of building cases against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted accomplice said to have solicited the letter from Trump.
Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to announce the lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing what he described as a “false, malicious, defamatory, fake news ‘article'” in what he referred to as a “useless rag” of a newspaper.
The lawsuit alleges that reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo co-authored an article incorrectly accusing Trump of creating a card featuring salacious language within a hand-drawn image of a naked woman. It further claims that the letter included offensive depictions allegedly signed by Trump, constituting significant journalistic and ethical oversights.
In the same post on Truth Social, Trump expressed anticipation at the prospect of having Rupert Murdoch testify, describing the forthcoming event as potentially “an interesting experience.”
Source: Original article