A Florida judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed last summer by Donald Trump over a Wall Street Journal report that he had sent a “bawdy” letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, though the judge has given the US president two weeks to refile the case.

Trump, who has had a habit of suing media companies inside and outside the White House, had argued that a lewd drawing at the heart of the story was fake. The lawsuit was especially notable because one of the defendants was Rupert Murdoch, one of Trump’s top media allies, whose News Corporation media empire owns the Journal.

Trump had called Murdoch personally to try to prevent publication of the 17 July, 2025 story, titled “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”

The Journal did not originally publish the image, though it was released by the House oversight committee in September after it was provided by Epstein’s estate.

Representatives for the Journal asked the judge to dismiss the claim, arguing that the story was accurate and that it did not meet the bar for defamation complaints because the authors did not publish the story knowing it was false or thinking it was likely to be false.

Judge Darrin P Gayles, in his ruling on Monday, agreed that the complaint “fails to adequately allege actual malice”, the standard for defamation lawsuits filed by well-known individuals.

The judge argued that there was significant evidence that the Journal sought to determine whether the drawing was genuine, and that the fact that Trump claimed it was fake does not mean that the Journal acted “with serious doubts” about the story.

“Because President Trump has not plausibly alleged that defendants published the article with actual malice, both counts must be dismissed,” Gayles wrote.

Trump’s team will be able to refile the lawsuit until 27 April with additional evidence that the Journal published the claim while knowing it was false or likely to be false. The judge also wrote in the motion that Trump’s team had not provided evidence or allegations of special damages.

“President Trump will follow Judge Gayles’s ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “The president will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in fake news to mislead the American people.”

Trump added his own comment on his Truth Social platform, reaffirming his legal team’s commitment to refile the lawsuit. “Our powerful case against The Wall Street Journal, and other defendants, was asked to be re-filed by the Judge,” he wrote. “It is not a termination, it is a suggested re-filing, and we will be, as per the Order, re-filing an updated lawsuit on or before April 27th.”

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the News Corp division behind the Journal, said: “We are pleased with the judge’s decision to dismiss this complaint. We stand behind the reliability, rigor and accuracy of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting.”

Trump still has an active lawsuit against the BBC over the editing of a documentary, and his administration has been sued by several media companies over first amendment issues.