Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal just hit a major snag with revelation

Source: Law & Crime

Updated Sep 9th, 2025, 5:55 pm


After the Wall Street Journal reported in July that Donald Trump sent and signed a "bawdy" 50th birthday letter to celebrate infamous sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, the president moved quickly to file a $20 billion defamation lawsuit that called the letter in question both "nonexistent" and a "fake."

On Monday, the House Oversight Committee released photo evidence of the so-called Epstein "birthday book," which it received from Epstein's estate in response to a subpoena — and the document dump included the apparent Trump missive, among many other letters, a number of them lewd. Though the White House has said Trump will "aggressively" continue "litigation," a leading defamation law expert tells Law&Crime that the development was actually "a stunning blow" for Trump's claims and an "enormous" boost for WSJ's defense.

Recall that in mid-July anticipation grew as rumor had it that an explosive WSJ story would shed further light on Trump's friendship with Epstein, whom he partied with at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s and praised in 2002 as a "terrific guy" with a noted interest in "beautiful women" on the "younger side" — three years before Epstein was first investigated in Palm Beach for sexually abusing young girls.

The WSJ article claimed the "bawdy" letter included a drawing of an outline of a naked woman's body with "Donald" signed "below her waist" seemingly "mimicking pubic hair," and a "typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person — with the line "Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret." Trump threatened to sue the WSJ prior to the publication, then immediately sued the next day in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/congressional-revelation-of-birthday-letter-to-epstein-is-a-stunning-blow-for-trump-lawsuit-against-wsj-legal-expert-says/