NEW YORK – In a dramatic escalation of his war with the media, President Donald Trump has filed a staggering $10 billion libel lawsuit against billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, his company Dow Jones, and two Wall Street Journal reporters. The lawsuit centers on a bombshell story detailing a lurid, sexually suggestive birthday card allegedly sent from Trump to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein two decades ago.
The move marks a high-risk, high-reward gamble for the president. While Trump is no stranger to using the legal system as a political weapon, this lawsuit plunges him into a perilous legal battle that could force a public reckoning with the darkest corners of his past. By suing for libel, he is not only challenging a powerful media empire but is also opening himself up to a sweeping discovery process that could unearth the very secrets he has long sought to keep buried. Legal experts warn that the lawsuit, far from silencing his critics, may ultimately become a vehicle for exposing the full, unvarnished details of his long and murky relationship with Epstein.
The Story and the Lawsuit
The controversy erupted after The Wall Street Journal published a story describing a letter, reportedly bearing Trump’s name, that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein compiled by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. According to the Journal, the letter featured “typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.” The note was styled as an imaginary, third-person conversation between Trump and Epstein, reportedly containing a joking reference that “enigmas never age” and concluding with the deeply suggestive line, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump immediately and vehemently denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory.” In a fiery social media post, he announced “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.” He has since insisted the card was fabricated by Democrats, part of a broader conspiracy to damage him politically.
Dow Jones has responded with unwavering confidence, stating it would “vigorously defend” itself against the lawsuit and that it has “full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.” This sets the stage for a monumental legal showdown between two of the most powerful figures in American media and politics.
The Perilous History of Libel Lawsuits
For Trump, the path forward is fraught with legal and historical peril. Libel suits have a long and storied history of backfiring spectacularly on the plaintiffs who initiate them. They can serve to amplify the very statements a plaintiff seeks to suppress, and the legal discovery process can become a weapon turned against them.
The legendary and notoriously aggressive attorney Roy Cohn, one of Trump’s early mentors, famously advised his clients never to sue for libel. He knew the cautionary tales of figures like Oscar Wilde and Alger Hiss, who both sued for libel only to have the truth, which is always a complete defense, lead to their own criminal prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment. More recently, high-profile figures like General William Westmoreland, who sued CBS over its reporting on the Vietnam War, and Israeli General Ariel Sharon, who sued Time Inc. over its reporting on his actions in Lebanon, both came up essentially empty-handed after protracted and reputationally damaging legal battles.
The primary reason for this is the incredibly high legal bar for a public figure to win a libel case in the United States. The landmark 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan established that a public official suing for libel must prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that the defamatory statements were published with “actual malice”—meaning the publisher had actual knowledge of their falsity or acted with a reckless disregard for the truth.
This standard is exceptionally difficult to meet, especially when suing a reputable news organization like The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s lawyers would have to prove that the Journal knew the birthday card was a fabrication or that they proceeded recklessly with a source they knew to be unreliable. It is far more likely that the document originated from the files of the Justice Department’s own Epstein investigation, which would grant it a significant degree of credibility in the eyes of the court.
The Discovery Trap: A Double-Edged Sword
While Trump has publicly relished the prospect of discovery, a legal process where both sides are forced to produce evidence and sit for sworn depositions, this is where the case holds the most danger for him. “I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,” the president stated. His lawyers have even asked the court to expedite Murdoch’s deposition, citing the 94-year-old’s age and health issues.
But those “many hours” are a double-edged sword. While Trump’s team may hope to unearth the source of the leak, Murdoch’s lawyers will have a broad mandate to depose Trump and others under oath, exploring the full, torrid history of his 15-year relationship with Epstein. They will be able to ask pointed and deeply uncomfortable questions about undisclosed details, including:
- How and when did the friendship between Trump and Epstein begin?
- How close was the relationship, and what did it entail?
- Was Trump ever aware of or involved with under-age women in Epstein’s circle?
- When, if ever, did Trump learn that Epstein was trafficking teenagers or engaged in other criminal acts?
- What were the true circumstances of their reported falling-out around 2004?
This line of questioning, conducted under the penalty of perjury, could prove far more damaging to Trump than the original story itself. The lawsuit could, paradoxically, become the very mechanism that forces the release of many of the Epstein-related documents that his own Justice Department has thus far refused to make public.
A Question of Damages and a History of Fighting
Even if Trump could somehow overcome the high legal bar for proving libel, he faces another significant hurdle: proving damages. In a libel case, a plaintiff must show that the defamatory statements harmed their reputation. Legal experts argue that Trump is essentially “libel-proof” on the issue of sexual misconduct. His reputation in this area is already well-established and has been litigated extensively in public. A civil jury in New York has already found him liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll, and a criminal jury convicted him of 34 felony counts related to covering up a tryst with pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels. It would be difficult for his lawyers to argue that this new story has materially damaged a reputation already so thoroughly defined by past scandals.
So why sue? For Trump, the answer may lie in his core political mantra: “fight, fight, fight.” As the writer Peggy Noonan observed, Trump will engage in a battle even when it is likely to hurt him, “because the fight is all.”
It is too early to predict the outcome, but this lawsuit feels different from Trump’s recent legal victories against media companies. His settlements with ABC and CBS seemed influenced by external corporate pressures on the parent companies. Murdoch, however, is a different kind of adversary, and people familiar with his thinking say he will never settle.
The Murdoch libel lawsuit, if Trump chooses to press forward, is a high-stakes bet on his ability to intimidate a media titan. But it is a bet that could easily go wrong, transforming a damaging news story into a catastrophic legal and political own goal, full of booby traps and unwelcome surprises for the man who pulled the trigger.
