President Donald Trump filed an amended complaint in his defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal in an effort to prove that the reporters published a birthday letter Trump allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein with actual malice.Obama-appointed judge Darrin P. Gayles of the Southern District of Florida had dismissed Trump’s original complaint in the defamation case, saying Trump had not properly demonstrated actual malice in his allegations. Trump is suing the outlet over its decision to publish the alleged crass birthday letter to Epstein from 2003, maintaining that he never wrote the letter, while the Wall Street Journal has defended its reporting.Trump re-filed the lawsuit on Wednesday ahead of Gayles’s imposed deadline for a revised complaint. In this filing, Trump’s lawyers include over four pages of points regarding why the president believes the reporters published the article containing the letter with actual malice.
Trump’s lawyers wrote that several omitted details should prove actual malice in the eyes of the court, including the omission of how the defendants obtained a copy of the alleged birthday letter, if and how the contents of the letter were verified, and why the publication did not include an image of the letter in the July 2025 article.
