Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Wall Street Journal, saying he can’t wait to fight him in court over the newspaper’s decision to publish a report alleging that the president wrote a “bawdy” message to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 as part of a birthday surprise for the disgraced financier.
“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”
The Journal published its story on Thursday, alleging that Trump was among the people who wrote letters to Epstein as part of an album put together by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and associate, for his 50th birthday.
The letter attributed to Trump that the Journal reviewed featured “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker,” the article states.
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the message concluded, according to the Journal.
The newspaper added that pages from the album have been examined by Justice Department investigators in the past, while noting that it was unclear whether the letter was among the materials reviewed in the most recent probe.
Trump, who disputed the authenticity of the letter, slammed the newspaper and threatened to sue both the outlet and Murdoch over its publication.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”
The president had previously said he also tried to get the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, to kill the story.
“Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so,” Trump said.
Tucker “was told directly by [White House press secretary] Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway,” he added.
Epstein died in federal prison one month after being arrested on charges of sex-trafficking minors in 2019, during Trump’s first term. While the president has tried to distance himself from Epstein, the two men had a well-documented friendship.
A recent memo by the Trump administration stating that there was no evidence to suggest he was murdered or that he held a client list to blackmail people contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s earlier comments that the client list was “sitting on [her] desk” for review under a directive from Trump.
Trump on Thursday ordered Bondi to release grand jury transcripts on the case “subject to Court approval,” but one Democrat has already remarked that the request covers just a fraction of the documents at the DOJ’s disposal.