The Wall Street Journal asked a U.S. judge on Monday to dismiss President Donald Trump's lawsuit alleging the paper defamed him in a July 17 article asserting Trump's name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump filed the lawsuit on July 18, as his administration faced criticism from its conservative base and congressional Democrats over its handling of the Epstein case. The Justice Department in early July said it would not make public files from its sex trafficking investigation into Epstein, a shift from earlier promises from Trump and his allies to do so.
The lawsuit is one of several Trump, a Republican, has filed in recent months against major media outlets over reporting he has characterized as unfair or false. That has led to concern among Democrats and press freedom advocates that he is seeking to use defamation cases to quell critical coverage.
To prevail in defamation cases, public figures like Trump must meet the "actual malice" standard, meaning they must prove not only that a public statement about them was false but also that the media outlet or person who made the statement knew or should have known it was false.
In his lawsuit against the Journal and its billionaire owner Rupert Murdoch, Trump called the alleged birthday greeting "fake" and sought $10 billion in damages for what he called damage to his reputation. News Corp's Dow Jones, the Journal's parent, defended the accuracy of its reporting.
Democrats in the House of Representatives on September 8 made public a letter that contained text of a purported dialog between Trump and Epstein within a sketch of the silhouette of a naked woman. The White House said that the signature on the letter was not Trump's.
The House said it had received the letter, part of a collection of greetings for Epstein's 50th birthday compiled by his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, from lawyers for Epstein's estate.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
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