US President Donald Trump has renewed his legal battle against The Wall Street Journal, filing a revised defamation lawsuit against the newspaper’s publishers after suffering a setback in court last month.
The dispute centres on a report about a “bawdy” birthday letter that the newspaper said Trump sent to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A district court in Florida dismissed the original lawsuit in April. Judge Darrin P. Gayles ruled that Trump had failed to plausibly demonstrate that the newspaper acted with “actual malice” in publishing the alleged letter to Epstein and that key legal criteria had not been met.
The WSJ reported on Thursday that, in the revised complaint, Trump again alleges the newspaper acted maliciously in “several respects.” The filing also points to the fact that the president has repeatedly denied any involvement with the letter.
As in the earlier lawsuit, Trump is seeking damages worth billions of dollars.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year on a letter sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 that allegedly bore Trump’s signature. According to the newspaper, the letter contained sexually suggestive text and featured a sketch of a female figure drawn with a marker pen. Trump denied authoring it.
The president subsequently filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the newspaper and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes the WSJ.
