Two months ago, President Donald Trump sued The Wall Street Journal for defamation after the newspaper reported that he had contributed to a 2003 collection of messages marking the 50th birthday of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was later charged with sex trafficking involving underage girls. Trump called that report a “scam” and a “fake story,” and his defamation complaint implied that the birthday letter attributed to him did not exist.
The Journal article “does not attach the purported letter [and] does not identify the purported drawing,” says the complaint, which Trump filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on July 18. “Tellingly, the Article does not explain whether Defendants have obtained a copy of the letter, have seen it, have had it described to them, or any other circumstances that would otherwise lend credibility to the Article. That is because the supposed letter is a fake and the Defendants knew it when they chose to deliberately defame President Trump.”
On Monday, the House Oversight Committee released a copy of that “fake” letter, along with a redacted version of the three-volume album that included it, which the committee obtained from Epstein’s estate via subpoena. Trump still insists he did not write the letter or sketch the outline of a nude woman that surrounds it. But whether or not that’s true, his lawsuit faces another hurdle that may be hard to overcome: Trump has to show that the Journal‘s report was not just false but also defamatory, meaning it damaged his reputation.
Trump’s complaint avers that the story “resulted in overwhelming financial and reputational damages” that are “expected to be in the billions of dollars.” But it never explains how.
Trump acknowledges that he was friendly with Epstein, who killed himself in prison while facing federal sex trafficking charges in 2019, for at least 15 years, ending with a falling-out in 2004 or so. That relationship is reflected in Trump’s trips on Epstein’s private jet and chummy photos of the two at various social events.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. Trump described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with,” adding: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
In this context, it would not be at all surprising if Trump participated in the birthday album, which also featured contributions from other celebrities, including former President Bill Clinton, billionaire Leslie Wexner, and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein after his first arrest in 2006. Joining those well-wishers does not imply anything more scandalous than the well-established fact that Trump was friends with a man who would later be accused of sex crimes. By itself, it does not suggest that Trump knew about Epstein’s illegal conduct, let alone that he condoned it or participated in it, all of which he has always denied.
Nor does the text of the letter—an imagined conversation between “Donald” and “Jeffrey” on the theme that “there must be more to life than having everything”—implicate Trump in anything more untoward than the vanity reflected in his description of the pair as wise “enigmas” who “never age.” And the “bawdy” drawing described by the Journal, including “a pair of small arcs denot[ing] the woman’s breasts” and a first-name signature “mimicking pubic hair,” seems mild compared to, say, Trump’s recorded comments about grabbing women “by the pussy.”
Trump’s lawsuit faults the Journal for attempting to “inextricably link President Trump to Epstein,” an “utterly disgraced” individual. But Trump’s conduct and comments had already established that link. “Is it defamatory that one millionaire sent a birthday card to another in 2003 before Epstein was discovered?” media attorney Damon Dunn wondered in an interview with Business Insider after Trump filed his complaint.
It’s a good question. Trump’s complaint asserts that the Journal‘s statements about him are “defamatory per se” because they “tend to harm” his reputation or “deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.” But the lawsuit does not explain why the birthday letter falls into one of the categories of statements traditionally recognized as inherently damaging, such as claims that the plaintiff committed a serious crime, engaged in sexual misconduct, or behaved in a way incompatible with his profession.
All of this is beside the point, of course, if Trump did in fact write the letter. To support the assertion that he did not, Taylor Budowich, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for communications, posted recent examples of the president’s signature on X. It is “time for [News Corporation, which owns the Journal] to open that checkbook,” Budowich wrote. “It’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!”
The New York Times notes that “one distinct difference between the signatures on Mr. Budowich’s posts and the Epstein birthday card is that the birthday card has only a signed first name for Mr. Trump, something he has typically reserved for personal notes.” But the Times cites examples of Trump’s first-name signature in correspondence with Rudy Giuliani and other New York City officials written from 1987 to 2001, and they bear a strong resemblance to the signature in the Epstein birthday album.
“As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an X post on Monday. Jurors might reasonably disagree. In any case, they might be skeptical of the claim that the Journal inflicted billions of dollars in reputational damage by confirming a relationship that was already widely known. Contrary to what Budowich seems to think, casting doubt on the authenticity of the signature is not enough to establish “DEFAMATION!”
