Murdoch beats Trump's suit on WSJ's Epstein exposé: What's next?

Trump can refile the complaint, but he's 'nowhere close' to winning, the judge added.

Rupert Murdoch (Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

Look out for a video interview about this development at the end of this newsletter.

A federal judge dismissed Donald Trump's lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and his media empire on Monday, rejecting claims that the Wall Street Journal's exposé of Trump's contribution to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book amounted to defamation.

U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayle gave Trump’s legal team another chance to refile an amended complaint by April 27.

Trump’s legal team vowed to take up the judge’s invitation.

‘Nowhere close to the standard’

Pursuing the lawsuit would keep alive a story that Trump has tried desperately to outrun.

In July, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Trump contributed a “bawdy” entry for a birthday scrapbook Ghislaine Maxwell stitched together for Epstein: a drawing of a “naked woman” with “small arcs” denoting her breasts and the name “Donald” signed over her crotch, mimicking pubic hair.

Denying the story as “fake,” Trump sued Murdoch, the Journal, and the reporters. Then, Epstein’s birthday book became public pursuant to a House Oversight Committee subpoena to Epstein’s estate, indicating that it remained in Epstein’s control since he received it as a gift in 2003. The book showed that the Trump letter was exactly as the Journal had described — and perhaps, even worse.

“The breasts on this figure are clearly those of a very young woman, not of the sort of voluptuous beauties that Donald Trump himself tends towards,” former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said in an interview.

Spanning more than 200 pages, Epstein’s birthday book has dozens of contributors, and only Trump has disputed the authenticity. Trump’s entry appears roughly two-thirds of the way into the book. Researchers matched his signature and typeface to other letters Trump wrote during that time, and Trump has an even tougher burden than proving an outlandish premise.

To win a defamation case, Trump needs to show that the Journal acted with “actual malice” by knowingly publishing a forgery or deliberately failing to investigate whether it was genuine.

The judge found that Trump’s lawsuit “comes nowhere close to the standard.”

“Quite the opposite,” the ruling states. “The article explains that, before running the story, Defendants contacted President Trump, Justice Department officials, and the FBI for comment. President Trump responded with his denial, the Justice Department did not respond at all, and the FBI declined to comment. In short, the complaint and article confirm that Defendants attempted to investigate.”

‘Like a marlin on a fish line’

For now, Judge Gayle put off ruling on whether Trump will be forced to pay The Wall Street Journal’s attorneys’ fees under anti-SLAPP law, a statute designed to punish litigation designed to chill free speech.

The Journal said that this is exactly the type of lawsuit such laws were meant to combat.

“In an affront to the First Amendment, the President of the United States brought this lawsuit to silence a newspaper for publishing speech that was subsequently proven true by documents released by Congress to the American public,” the paper’s motion to dismiss says. “By its very nature, this meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the President does not like.”

Moving ahead with the lawsuit could leave Trump on the hook for Murdoch’s legal fees when the litigation ends, and legal experts noted that those could add up.

“The Wall Street Journal here is paying a lot of money for very good lawyers to defend it, and they’re doing a very good job,” Epner said. “And being required to pay the legal fees for most people would be an enormous disincentive to continue a frankly frivolous lawsuit.”

Epner says that’s not true for Trump, who has raked in billions in cryptocurrency over his presidency and likely views the tab as a “rounding error.”

“He’s desperately thrashing about like a marlin on a fish line, trying to figure out any way to get out from here,” Epner said. “Now, I don’t think that there is a way out for him, but Donald Trump has made his fortune in continuing to fight things that other people would say there’s no upside to fighting. And there have been millions upon millions of Americans who have chosen to believe him over their own lying eyes.”

Trump has had some luck forcing media giants like ABC and CBS to fold in lawsuits widely viewed as dubious by threatening the vindictive use of White House power.

Epner wouldn’t make any predictions about whether News Corporation would follow suit.

“I don’t guess what Rupert Murdoch’s going to do, because the only thing I know for certain about the future is it hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “What I think it means is that up until now, that part I can comment about, is that Rupert Murdoch decided that he was not going to be played for a punk in the way that the Disney Corporation was and that CBS was.”

Read the full order here.

Watch the full video interview with Epner on Legal AF’s All Rise News playlist below.