The judge wrote that Trump’s legal team did not prove that the defendants made defamatory statements with “actual malice”, which the law requires be proven.
Actual malice is high bar to meet, as it requires proof that the defendant knew the defamatory statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true or not.
Trump alleged that the letter obtained and released by the Journal, which features his signature at the bottom, was “fake” and that the defendants devised the story in order to defame him.
Trump’s legal team had argued that because Trump denied writing the letter when contacted by the Journal, the paper should have “disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story”, Gayles wrote.
“But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment,” Gayles wrote.
If that were the law, he wrote, then “any time a public figure or his team denies an accusation, journalists would be immediately blocked from publishing negative or contradictory press—a result that flies in the face of the ‘American privilege to speak one’s mind'”.
According to the Wall Street Journal story, a letter bearing Trump’s name “contained several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker”.
It reportedly contained a joking reference that “enigmas never age” and allegedly ended with the words: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret”.
