Following The Wall Street Journal‘s bombshell report on a birthday letter Donald Trump allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein, the president sued the newspaper’s parent company, News Corp., Dow Jones (its publisher), two reporters for the Journal, and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp. owner.
According to the lawsuit filed in Southern District of Florida on Friday and obtained by Rolling Stone Trump is seeking at least $10 billion in damages and accused the Journal of “knowingly and recklessly published the numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements” in their report. He also alleged that reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo “falsely represent as fact that President Trump drew the naked woman’s breasts and signed his name ‘Donald’ below her waist. Trump also accused the reporters of having “failed attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proof that President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained,” adding: “The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists.”
In the Journal‘s story published Thursday evening, the newspaper alleged that a collection of letter had been gifted to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday and compiled in a 2003 album by Ghislane Maxwell, also a convicted sex offender. According to the newspaper, among the pages of the album was a note bearing Donald Trump‘s name outlined by a drawing of a naked woman that also enclosed the text: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.”
The president has vehemently denied that he wrote the letter or drew the picture. “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” he wrote on Truth Social following the report. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures.”
Despite Trump’s denial that he doesn’t doodle, he has a well-known history of drawing pictures for charity events. Trump himself has boasted about his penchant for scribbles, and in a 2010 book titled Trump Never Give Up, he wrote: “Sometimes being a giver will open you up to new talents. Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green. It takes me a few minutes to draw something.… Art may not be my strong point, but the end result is help for people who need it.”
In a Truth Social post shared on Friday, Trump wrote: “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!”
