Trump v. The Wall Street Journal
It is, I suppose, an illustration of just how diminished and even sordid our political life has become these days that L’Affaire Epstein is the hot political show of the summer. But there it is. We’ll see if it has legs for an extended run into the new fall season.
Here’s what we know: Media megastar and ex-“Apprentice” co-producer and host Donald Trump has sued media megamogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for defamation in federal district court [SD FL]. [The Complaint is available here] The suit is based on a front-page WSJ story asserting that a “letter bearing Trump’s name” appeared in a 2003 birthday album celebrating Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. The story described the letter this way:
“The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.  The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump says that there is no such letter. The Complaint states:
“[Defendants] falsely claimed that [Trump] authored, drew, and signed a card to wish the late—and utterly disgraced—Jeffrey Epstein a happy fiftieth birthday. . . . [N]o authentic letter or drawing exists. Defendants concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light. . . . [T]he supposed letter is a fake and the Defendants knew it when they chose to deliberately defame President Trump.” [emph. added]
Needless to say, I haven’t the faintest idea whether the letter does or does not exist. If it does, though, Trump would surely know that it does, and, knowing that, he’d be an absolute madman to file this suit. That makes me think there’s no such letter. On the other hand, surely the editors at the WSJ, a newspaper not known for manufacturing fake news, knew that the article was a potential bombshell, and would have taken extra-special precautions to ensure that all facts stated therein were true. That makes me think there is such a letter.
My strong suspicion is that the Journal will be able to produce a salacious letter “bearing Trump’s name” – it is inconceivable that the Journal would have proceeded if such a thing did not actually exist – and that Trump will deny authorship or any knowledge of it. His defamation claim will require him to show not only that the letter in the Journal’s possession is a fake, but also that the WSJ’s investigation of the letter’s provenance was inadequate, amounting to a “reckless indifference” to whether or not it was a fake.
The history of high-profile defamation lawsuits is littered with the carcasses of plaintiffs who ended up deeply regretting their decision to sue, from, most famously, Oscar Wilde[1]to Te
Article from Reason.com
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