A federal judge in Miami has dismissed Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media owner Rupert Murdoch, ruling that the president did not prove the newspaper published defamatory statements with actual malice, as the law requires for a public figure. US District Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the case with prejudice on Saturday, meaning the same claim cannot be refiled.

The judge said the president was grasping at straws and that the lawsuit had attempted to manufacture flaws in the Journal's investigative reporting. The case concerned a story published last year describing a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that the paper said bore Trump's name and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday. The lawsuit accused the paper and its reporters of knowingly and recklessly publishing false and defamatory statements that caused overwhelming financial and reputational harm.

Second dismissal

Gayles had previously dismissed the suit in April, saying Trump had failed to argue that the article was published with intent to be malicious, but gave him the chance to file an amended complaint, which he did in May. In the new ruling, the judge again found that actual malice had not been shown, citing the Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which sets the standard for defamation claims by public figures.

What dismissal with prejudice means

Because the dismissal is with prejudice, it is permanent for this claim: the case cannot be brought before the court again in the same form. The ruling does not decide the truth of the underlying birthday-album story itself; it decides that the legal test for defamation by a public figure was not met on the case as presented.