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Another day, another Trump trollsuit bites the dust.
This time it was his $10 billion defamation claim against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for an article describing a “bawdy” drawing he penned — allegedly! — for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.
Just one day after the story was published, Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito filed suit in Florida alleging “overwhelming financial and reputational damages to President Trump, expected to be in the billions of dollars” and claiming that reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light.” Two months later, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the birthday book compiled by Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, with an image that matched the reporters’ description exactly.
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On Monday, a federal judge in Miami finally dismissed the case for failure to satisfy even the most basic requirements of federal pleading.
“The Complaint comes nowhere close to this standard,” wrote Judge Darrin Gayles. “Quite the opposite.”
This is not an isolated outcome. The world’s most famous vexatious litigant regularly spams courts demanding an eleven-figure payout. In addition to the Journal, he’s currently suing the New York Times, the BBC, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, the IRS, Bob Woodward and his publisher Simon and Schuster, the Pulitzer Prize Board, and (through his media company) the Washington Post. Previous targets include Hillary Clinton, CNN, ABC, the New York Times (again), the Washington Post (also again), CBS, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and E. Jean Carroll.
The complaints are various flavors of garbage. They lob accusations instead of facts, demand billions without identifying a single dollar of actual loss, and make their most serious allegations “upon information and belief” — the legal equivalent of “trust me, bro.” No court or jury has ever blessed these claims. In fact, Trump has been sanctioned multiple times for filing patently ridiculous lawsuits.
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In 2023, a federal judge fined Trump nearly $1 million for a frivolous RICO suit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and half the Democrats in DC. Judge Donald Middlebrooks described the Trump litigation playbook: “Provocative and boastful rhetoric; a political narrative carried over from rallies; attacks on political opponents and the news media; disregard for legal principles and precedent; and fundraising and payments to lawyers from political action committees.”
With Trump back in the White House, the focus appears to be more on leveraging the power of the presidency to extort settlements rather than rallying the base. But he’s still tapping donor cash to fund his litigation. Trump’s Save America leadership PAC paid Brito PLLC nearly $300,000 in 2025 alone, logged as “legal consulting.” Brito’s firm also picked up $1 million in fees from the settlement with ABC.
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