By Jack Queen
NEW YORK, May 28 (Reuters) – In a refiled $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump says that Rupert Murdoch told him he would “handle” a story about Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein after the U.S. president called him to complain.
The lawsuit is one of several Trump has brought in his personal capacity against news organizations, part of what critics say is a wider pressure campaign against the media. Last month, a judge dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit over legal deficiencies but allowed Trump to revise and refile.
Trump’s lawsuit says the Journal tarnished his reputation with an article describing a birthday card to deceased sex offender Epstein as bearing Trump’s signature. Trump and his lawyers said the card is fake. Lawmakers investigating Epstein’s case later released a copy provided by his estate.
According to the amended lawsuit, Trump called Murdoch on July 15 after Journal reporters contacted the White House about the story.
“In response, Murdoch stated, ‘I will handle it,’ which President Trump reasonably interpreted as meaning that Murdoch believed President Trump, and that the article would not be published,” the lawsuit says.
Representatives of Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company and a defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing or on the allegation regarding Murdoch. Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp, has previously said it has full confidence in the Journal’s reporting and will defend itself in court. Murdoch is chairman emeritus of News Corp.
Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender, died in a New York jail cell in 2019 in what the city’s chief medical examiner determined was a suicide.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, names Murdoch, Dow Jones, News Corp and its CEO, Robert Thomson, along with two Wall Street Journal reporters as defendants, saying they defamed Trump and caused him to suffer “overwhelming” financial and reputational harm.
In throwing out Trump’s first lawsuit in April, U.S. District Court Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said Trump had not met the “actual malice” legal standard for public figures in defamation cases, which requires evidence that a defendant published a statement that they knew or should have known was false.
Trump has also filed defamation and other lawsuits against other media organizations, including the New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation and Iowa’s Des Moines Register. Those outlets have denied wrongdoing and are fighting the cases in court.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Edwina Gibbs and Matthew Lewis)
Comments