President Donald Trump said Thursday he would sue the Wall Street Journal and its owner over a new bombshell report about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin the process of unsealing grand jury testimony in the disgraced financier’s criminal case.
“Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” Trump said on social media, though it’s unclear that a judge would approve the request. “This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”
That post came less than an hour after the president responded to a report in the Journal alleging he had sent a racy birthday letter to Epstein. Trump said he had personally warned the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its editor in chief, Emma Tucker, that the letter was “fake” before the report was published, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.”
“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on social media hours after the Journal published its report.
In the immediate wake of the report’s publication, the White House rushed to decry it as false. Vice President JD Vance said on X it was “complete and utter bullshit” — echoing the expletive Trump used this week to describe the Epstein news cycle. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt — whom Trump said had also told Tucker the story was “fake” — called it a “hatchet job article” and claimed the outlet “refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document.”
Representatives for News Corp and the Journal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier Thursday, pressed by reporters on if Bondi would release more information related to Epstein, Leavitt said she would only do so if the Department of Justice or FBI came across any new “credible evidence.”
“The president believes that he directed the Department of Justice to do an exhaustive and thorough review, and they did that, and they all agreed — the FBI director, the deputy FBI director, the attorney general — on the memo that they drafted and they released,” Leavitt said during a briefing.
But hours later, that had changed. Two minutes after Trump posted his directive to Bondi, the attorney general confirmed “we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
There are a slew of caveats to Trump’s call to unseal the “pertinent” grand jury transcripts. For one thing, grand jury secrecy rules are extremely strict and courts are reluctant to lift them, regardless of their political significance.
That sensitivity is particularly heightened in the Epstein case; most of the victims and witnesses are still alive, and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is still appealing her conviction for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
In addition, the grand jury material represents only a portion of the evidence the Justice Department has collected related to the Epstein investigation. Even if a court granted its release, it would not include significant portions of what’s been colloquially referred to as the “Epstein files.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a former federal prosecutor, underscored that in a post on X by noting that the grand jury testimony will largely relate only to Epstein and Maxwell and may exclude things like videos, photographs and FBI witness interview summaries.
Murdoch is the owner of News Corp, a conglomeration of conservative — and typically Trump-friendly — media outlets including the Journal, the New York Post and Fox News. Trump has historically been friendly with Murdoch and his outlets, though their relationship has hit bumps over the years and especially during his second term, as the president has repeatedly bashed polls and coverage he deems unfriendly.
The threat is the latest in a series of legal actions Trump has taken against media outlets. The president settled with ABC News for $15 million in December and $16 million with Paramount, CBS News’ parent company, earlier this month. The president was also in a legal battle with the Associated Press after he briefly barred the outlet from the Oval Office over a disagreement with its style guide.
Vance traveled last month to Murdoch’s ranch in Montana to meet with Murdoch, his son Lachlan and a group of Fox News executives.
In its report, which alleged Trump sent a lewd birthday card to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, the Journal wrote that the president, reached by phone, had denied writing the letter and threatened to sue the outlet on Tuesday. He called it “a fake thing” and “a fake Wall Street Journal story.”
“I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he told the Journal.
Trump in his social media post confirmed that he and Leavitt had told Tucker the story was “FAKE,” but she “didn’t want to hear that.”
The report and threat are the latest in the Epstein saga, which exploded from fringe conspiracy into a political earthquake for the White House earlier this month after the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation released a long-awaited memo concluding that there was no evidence that Epstein was murdered in his jail cell or that a “client list” — long sought by conspiracists — existed.
Since then, as Trump and the White House have downplayed the story, some of Trump’s staunchest political allies — including Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Laura Loomer — have called for increased transparency.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
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