Federal Judge Shuts Down Trump's Discovery Request As He Attempts to Salvage Suit vs. WSJ

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

May 13th, 2026, 9:19 pm


A federal judge in Florida smacked down President Donald Trump’s discovery request, which he filed in an attempt to salvage his defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, but did grant him additional time to file an amended complaint.

In 2025, Trump sued the Journal, the Journal’s publishing firm Dow Jones, parent company News Corp, owner Rupert Murdoch, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, and two Journal reporters, Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, for defamation. The complaint alleged that a July 17, 2025 Journal article by Safdar and Palazzolo that reported Trump had contributed a letter and a lewd drawing to a birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein, compiled by the convicted sex predator’s accomplice and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Trump vociferously denied the report, threatened to sue, and then did so a day later. Legal experts were highly skeptical of the lawsuit’s merit from the beginning. Because the president is a public figure, he has to prove the newspaper acted with “actual malice” in order to sustain a defamation claim; it’s a very high bar that political figures often fail to meet when attempting to sue journalists who have criticized them or published unflattering stories.

In September, the House Oversight Committee metaphorically nuked Trump’s case from orbit when it released a trove of materials provided by Epstein’s estate, including the birthday book. Inside the book was a page that said it was contributed by Trump, along with his signature, message, and drawing of a nude female figure — exactly as the Journal’s reporting had described it. Last month, Judge Darrin P. Gayles of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, an Obama appointee, dismissed Trump’s complaint, finding that it had “not plausibly alleged that the Defendants published the Article with actual malice.”

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/federal-judge-shuts-down-trumps-discovery-request-as-he-attempts-to-salvage-suit-vs-wsj-expensive-yet-groundless-litigation/

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Full headline - Federal Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Discovery Request As He Attempts to Salvage Suit vs. WSJ: ‘Expensive Yet Groundless Litigation’

Link to ORDER (PDF viewer) - https://www.scribd.com/document/1038806152/Order-denying-Trump-s-discovery-request-in-WSJ-defamation-lawsuit


REFERENCES

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143497550
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