President Donald Trump on Friday sued media mogul Rupert Murdoch over the Wall Street Journal’s recent investigative reporting that said Trump sent his then-friend Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday. It’s the first time that Trump has targeted a media organization with legal action as sitting president.
The lawsuit, filed with the federal court in the Southern District of Florida, names Murdoch, his company News Corp, and its CEO Robert Thomson, the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co., and the two reporters who wrote the article published Thursday—Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo. This is the latest escalation in Trump’s legal battles with news outlets that he claims have been unfair to him.
“We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is, The Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite President, ME,” he continued, “but also in order to continue standing up for ALL Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media.”
In a statement to CNBC, a Dow Jones spokesperson said: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
The Thursday article in the WSJ details a leather-bound album of letters compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. In the album, according to documents reviewed by the WSJ, is a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s name. “It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman,” Safdar and Palazzolo wrote, “which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”
In an interview with the Journal, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, saying that it was not him, that it was fake, and that “It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story.” In that interview, he also said he would “sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.”
The alleged album was reportedly assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006, after allegations became public that he was sexually abusing girls. In 2019, Epstein died in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy. The Journal’s exclusive also reported that there was a letter accompanying the drawing, which was “styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein.”
The Journal reported that letter reading: