Judge Dismisses Trump's $10 Billion Journal Suit

A federal judge in Miami dismissed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch on Saturday. Judge Darrin Gayles ruled the case out with prejudice, a legal term meaning the lawsuit is permanently closed and cannot be refiled. The decision ends the legal dispute over a story that detailed Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

In the ruling, Gayles stated that the president was “grasping at straws.” The judge found that the defendants did not make defamatory statements with actual malice, a high standard required for public figures in defamation cases. The court noted that the lawsuit attempted to “manufacture” flaws in the Journal’s investigative reporting.

The dismissal marks a final conclusion to the litigation. Because the case was thrown out with prejudice, the plaintiff does not have the option to amend the complaint and try again in the same court. This outcome provides a definitive legal end to the specific claims regarding the Epstein narrative.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, an Associated Press analysis found that Iran focused its strikes on early-warning systems before targeting aircraft and buildings. The analysis verified damage to American targets using satellite imagery from multiple providers. Officials briefed on the strikes said that through August, more than 115 drone or missile strikes damaged or destroyed structures on 26 military bases and other sites with U.S. equipment. The attacks caused billions of dollars in equipment damage.

The FBI announced Saturday that North Korean hackers orchestrated the theft of billions of dollars from Binance. The bureau identified the attackers as the entity known as TraderTraitor, which was also behind a $1.5 billion hack of Bybit last year. The FBI described the incident as the biggest crypto heist in history. The bureau asked crypto exchanges and blockchain analytics companies to block transactions linked to specific addresses. Investigators found that the hackers were converting the stolen assets primarily into ethereum.

In Alaska, state officials urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed at the direction of the Trump administration. The suit seeks to stop the certification of a possible Democratic win in the state’s U.S. Senate race. The state’s attorney general’s office called the case “meritless” and said there is “no reason for this Court to entertain this meritless lawsuit any longer.” Judge Sharon L. Gleason set a deadline for arguments on whether to dismiss the case without a hearing. The complaint demands a halt to certification until it is determined if voters were confused by a second candidate on the ballot with the same name as the main rival, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration did not facilitate the departure of defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro to the United States. Bolsonaro arrived in Miami on Wednesday, a day after the State Department granted him and his family U.S. visas. Rubio told reporters in Atlanta, where Group of 20 diplomats were gathered, that “We didn’t facilitate anything.” Bolsonaro had lost his election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a race that bucked recent trends of conservative electoral results in Latin America.