President Trump is making good on his vow to sue Rupert Murdoch after one of the papers he owns, the Wall Street Journal, published a report that said he sent a “bawdy” birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein two decades ago.
On Thursday, the Journal reported on a letter “bearing Trump’s name” that was in an album with letters from other “associates.” The paper described the letter as containing “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, 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.”
Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Trump made good on his vow to sue the paper over the report, filing a libel lawsuit in a federal court at Miami against Mr. Murdoch and the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones. The text of the complaint was not immediately available.
Mr. Trump made no secret that he planned to sue the Journal if it published the report. He said in an interview with the paper, “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story.”
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.”
In several posts on Truth Social after the report was published, Mr. Trump attacked the Journal. On Friday morning, he wrote, “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!”
While Mr. Trump has denied the report, a left-wing media reporter, Oliver Darcy, suggested during an episode of his “Power Lines” podcast that the report was “bullet-proof” as he noted the story was not published until two days after the reporters interviewed the president, he said implies that they were carefully reviewing the story to ensure it was correct.
He questioned if Mr. Trump really wants to go through the discovery process, during which the letter would likely be released. His co-host, Jon Passantino, suggested that Mr. Trump does not “need” to go to trial and could try to extract a settlement and claim victory as he has done with other media companies, such as ABC News and CBS News.
However, Mr. Darcy suggested that Mr. Murdoch may not be willing to settle, which would potentially put the president in the “embarrassing” position of having to drop his lawsuit to avoid a trial and discovery, or risk a potentially bruising legal battle.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
