US President Donald Trump on Saturday filed a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch and journalists. The suit, filed in federal court in Miami, demands $10 billion. Trump says these people defamed him and damaged his reputation. The Wall Street Journal published a report describing a letter sent by Trump in a 2003 birth date album compiled by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It said the letter had a picture of a nude woman with Trump’s signature below her waist. The note read, “Happy Birthday and may every day bring a wonderful secret.” Convicted sex offender Epstein committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019. The complaint claims that given the timing of this news, the financial and reputational damage to Trump will continue to grow.
The suit names as defendants the Journal’s parent company News Corp, News Corp founder and former chairman Murdoch, CEO Robert Thompson, Journal publisher Dow Jones and two Journal journalists. The Journal published a story Thursday with the headline, “Jeffrey Epstein’s friends sent him obscene letters for his 50th birthday album. One of them was from Donald Trump.” According to news agency AP, under pressure from Trump supporters, the administration on Friday requested a federal court to reveal confidential documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
However, even if these records are made public, it is not certain that they will satisfy those critics. Meanwhile, the administration is facing questions about fueling conspiracy theories and refusing to release other records it holds after promising to expose government secrets about the “deep state.” Trump on Thursday night strongly denied a report in The Wall Street Journal that he sent Epstein a happy birthday greeting in 2003 along with a drawing that carried a lewd innuendo.
“I don’t draw,” he wrote on Truth Social. But the president’s past shows Trump has been a high-profile doodler for years. In the 2000s, he regularly donated drawings to charities in New York.