Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones on Friday issued a statement vowing to "vigorously defend" itself after US President Donald Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit over a recent article linking him to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit,” news agency AFP quoted a Dow Jones spokesperson's statement hours after the suit was filed in a Miami federal court.
The lawsuit names Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo as defendants.
What Trump's lawsuit against WSJ report says
In the 18-page complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Trump alleges the Journal published a defamatory and false story regarding his past interactions with Epstein.
The article, published Thursday, claims that Trump, then a real estate developer, had sent a suggestive birthday letter to Epstein in 2003, including a nude illustration and a reference to a shared “secret.”
The suit claims no such letter exists, accusing the Journal and its reporters of fabricating evidence to harm Trump politically.
{{/usCountry}}The suit claims no such letter exists, accusing the Journal and its reporters of fabricating evidence to harm Trump politically.
{{/usCountry}}“The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists,” Trump's legal team wrote in the filing. The lawsuit also argues that the newspaper committed "glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting" and that the story was “false, malicious, defamatory.”
Trump calls article ‘FAKE NEWS’
Reacting publicly on Truth Social, the 79-year-old Republican said late Friday, “We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is, The Wall Street Journal.”
The US President had threatened legal action almost immediately after the report’s publication. The article has since been widely circulated, with Trump’s legal team claiming it was viewed by “hundreds of millions of people.”
The article in question did not include images of the alleged letter or drawing, which Trump's lawyers say further undermines its credibility.
There has been no immediate response from the individual journalists or News Corp regarding the suit.
(With AP, AFP inputs)