The courts were busy over the weekend with a number of notable decisions being issued, including one that may have been flying under the radar with all of the pre-election litigation center stage.
President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over that infamous Jeffrey Epstein birthday letter has reached the end of the road in federal district court. But lest anyone mistakenly conclude that this was because the judge has officially determined Trump wrote the letter, that's not what happened here.
On Saturday, October 31, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles (Obama) dismissed Trump's amended complaint against the WSJ, its parent companies, Rupert Murdoch, and others with prejudice. The president had already been given an opportunity to amend his lawsuit, and the judge concluded that his second attempt still fell short.
The issue wasn't whether the disputed birthday letter was authentic. It was whether Trump had adequately alleged that the WSJ published its story with actual malice. (And no, that doesn't mean he had to show the reporters suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome — they may, but that's beside the point here.)
As readers may well be aware, under the Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, public figures face a particularly steep climb when suing for defamation. They must establish that the publisher knew the challenged information was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true, which is a considerably higher bar than simply showing that a story was inaccurate, unfair, or inadequately investigated.
Trump argued that the WSJ published its account despite his emphatic denials, failed to adequately verify the purported letter, and ignored information that should have raised serious doubts about its authenticity. But Gayles wasn't persuaded.
For one thing, the WSJ actually included Trump's denial in its reporting. The judge observed that allowing readers to consider competing accounts undermined the allegation that the publication acted with actual malice.
He also rejected the suggestion that the reporters' failure to possess their own copy of the letter, rather than merely review it, demonstrated reckless disregard for the truth.
And Gayles called Trump's reliance on Ghislaine Maxwell's statement that she didn't remember him submitting a birthday letter a "red herring." Not remembering something isn't the same as establishing it never happened. Moreover, Maxwell's statement to DOJ came after the WSJ published its original report.
There's one more potential twist with this one. The WSJ defendants are seeking attorneys' fees under anti-SLAPP laws designed to protect against certain lawsuits targeting free speech. Gayles has reserved that issue, giving the defendants 30 days to file a properly supported request addressing which state's law applies.
So Trump has suffered a significant legal defeat, although an appeal could still be in the offing.
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