Epstein affair: Legal setback for Donald Trump over a licentious letter addressed to the sex criminal

The American president had denied being the author of this salacious letter. A US federal judge on Saturday dismissed his defamation complaint against the Wall Street Journal for an article attributing this letter to the attention of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

Donald Trump attacked the newspaper for defamation, as well as its boss Rupert Murdoch, demanding at least $10 billion in damages. In his decision, Florida Judge Darrin P. Gayles refrains from ruling on the authenticity of the letter but considers that the Wall Street Journal duly investigated and acted in good faith in publishing its contents. Conversely, he believes that Donald Trump has not demonstrated that the newspaper wrote its article knowing it was false.

A letter slipped into a guestbook

The judge definitively rejected the president's complaint, which means that Donald Trump will not be able to file a new amended version, as he did after a first rejection in April. The publication of the contents of this letter had revived speculation about the past links of the tenant of the White House with the New York financier, with whom he was close for around fifteen years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this letter appeared in a guestbook intended for Jeffrey Epstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday. His partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, then contacted several dozen of her friends, including Donald Trump, at the time a real estate mogul.

The letter attributed to the president, revealed in 2025 by the newspaper then made public by Democratic parliamentarians, includes several lines of typewritten text surrounded by a sketch of a naked woman with her signature evoking a pubic hair.

Sexual allusions

The text of the missive depicts an imaginary exchange between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, in which the former says: "We have some things in common Jeffrey." “Riddles never get old, have you noticed that,” he also wrote before concluding: “Happy birthday. May each day be another wonderful secret.”

The guestbook, signed by several personalities, included several other sexual allusions or double-meaning messages around the reputation of the financier, presented as a seducer with multiple conquests.

Revelations at the end of January

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and charged in July 2019 with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit this offense. He had already been sentenced to a short prison sentence in 2008, notably for recruiting a minor for the purposes of prostitution. The publication of the letter attributed to Donald Trump emerged in the context of growing pressure for the disclosure of the entire Epstein file, leading to the publication on January 30 of “more than three million pages”.