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President Donald Trump is appealing the dismissal of his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against American media billionaire Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal, keeping alive his legal fight over the newspaper's story linking him to a birthday letter for Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump's lawyers filed a notice of appeal this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. The filing challenges an Oct. 31 order by U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Miami, who dismissed Trump's amended complaint with prejudice, which means it cannot be filed again in the lower court.
The suit names Murdoch, News Corp, its chief executive Robert Thomson, Dow Jones & Co., the Journal and the two reporters who wrote the story. Dow Jones, the News Corp unit that publishes the Journal, has said it stands by its reporting.
Why the judge threw it out
Gayles ruled that Trump had failed to plausibly allege "actual malice," the standard a public figure must meet to win a defamation case in the U.S. It requires showing that a publisher knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. The judge called Trump's allegations "conclusory" and "vague" and said his lawyers were "grasping at straws" in trying to find flaws in the Journal's reporting.
He also rejected the argument that the newspaper should have held the story once Trump denied writing the letter, saying such a rule would violate the First Amendment.
After the ruling, a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said Trump "will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit" against the Journal and the other defendants. A Dow Jones spokesperson said at the time: "We're pleased with the court's decision."
The appeal moves the case to a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit, which hears appeals from federal courts in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. It could take months before the court hears arguments.
The birthday letter
The Journal published its story on July 17, 2025. It described a sexually suggestive letter bearing Trump's name that was included in an album compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denied writing the letter and sued the next day. In September 2025, the House Oversight Committee released a copy of the birthday book, obtained from Epstein's estate, and the letter was among its pages. The White House has continued to deny that Trump wrote or signed it.
Gayles first dismissed the case in April and allowed Trump to file a revised complaint, which he did in May. The judge found that the new version did not fix the problems.
Trump is also suing the New York Times for $15 billion and the BBC for $10 billion. His suit over an Iowa poll by pollster J. Ann Selzer was dismissed with prejudice in September.
Murdoch, 95, built News Corp from a single newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, into a global media group that owns the Journal, the New York Post and The Times of London, and founded the Fox News channel. He is chairman emeritus of News Corp and Fox Corp., which are run by his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch. On Friday, Fox completed its $22 billion takeover of streaming company Roku Inc.
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