Judge dismisses Donald Trump's $10bn lawsuit against Wall Street Journal

A judge has dismissed Donald Trump's $10bn (£7.43bn) lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Florida wrote in the order that Mr Trump had failed to make the argument that the article was published with the intent to be malicious, but gave the US president a chance to file an amended complaint.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump called the lawsuit, filed in July last year, "historic legal action" which he said was filed on behalf of himself and all Americans who will "no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media".

"I hope Rupert and his 'friends' are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case," he wrote after launching the defamation lawsuit.

The WSJ's report focused on a letter the publication said Mr Trump wrote as part of a collection Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, planned to give him as a 50th birthday present in 2003.

Mr Trump claimed that the letter he allegedly wrote to paedophile Epstein was "fake" and said he would sue the "ass off" Mr Murdoch after the WSJ published the story last July.

The WSJ said the letter featured several lines of typewritten text, concluding with: "May every day be another wonderful secret."

The text was framed by what appeared to be a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, the WSJ claimed. The letter is also said to have featured the signature "Donald".

Mr Trump immediately denied writing the letter, which was subsequently released publicly by Congress via subpoenaed records from Epstein's estate, when the report was published.

"The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein," he wrote on Truth Social at the time.

"These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don't draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn't print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I'm going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper."

Lawyers for the WSJ and Mr Murdoch had asked the judge to rule that the article's statements were true and therefore couldn't be defamatory, but the judge wrote in his order that "whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein's friend are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation".

This is the latest blow in the Trump administration's efforts to manage the fallout over its release of the Epstein files and the president's attempts to use the legal system to chill reporting he finds critical of him.

Reuters reported that a spokesman for Trump's legal team said he would refile the lawsuit.