'Do not cross me': Ex-DOJ prosecutor explains why 'bogus' Trump lawsuit is especially dangerous
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before signing the "Genius Act", which will develop regulatory framework for stablecoin cryptocurrencies and expand oversight of the industry, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 18, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Although the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business have been extremely favorable to Donald Trump, the U.S. president is suing Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal for $10 billion in response to a bombshell report that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a "bawdy" letter for his 50th birthday. WSJ's article never accused Trump of doing anything illegal or taking part in Epstein's crimes, but Trump is vehemently denying that he wrote the alleged letter.
Many legal experts, including MSNBC's Lisa Rubin, consider Trump's lawsuit frivolous and badly flawed. Rubin told her colleague Nicolle Wallace, a Never Trump conservative, that the Journal's reporting "was so particularly carefully worded" and gave the impression that "a legal department had scoured every last punctuation mark and word in it."
But law professor and former federal prosecutor Kimberly Wehle, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on July 23, emphasizes that even though Trump's lawsuit is extremely "bogus," that doesn't make it any less dangerous.
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"Trump's lawsuit is obviously flawed as a matter of law and what's already known about the facts," Wehle explains. "Lawyers with expertise in Florida defamation law told Reuters that the lawsuit warrants tossing out because Trump failed to provide the requisite notice to the defendants in advance of suing them. Moreover, the $10 billion figure is ridiculously inflated."
Wehle continues, "Damages for defamation are generally based on proof of 'actual, quantifiable financial losses directly linked to the defamation'…. Undoubtedly, the Wall Street Journal meticulously fact-checked, knowing full well that Trump has a habit of filing monstrous lawsuits against news outlets that do reporting he doesn't like. But the facts don't really matter. They never do with Trump."
The former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor argues that the "overall cost of mounting a defense" is "the point" of Trump's WSJ lawsuit.
"The legal minutiae are really beside the point," Wehle warns. "This is about intimidation, bullying, and silencing speech — which gets us back to the First Amendment. Trump not only has his own billions of dollars to pay lawyers, but he now controls, or appears to basically control, the military, the DOJ and FBI, the CIA, ICE, the federal checkbook, and Republicans in Congress — not to mention his influence on the Supreme Court majority and huge swaths of the social media stratosphere, if you consider his coziness with certain tech titans."
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Wehle adds, "He also has a cadre of elite law firms who have pledged him billions in 'pro bono' support in exchange for backing off from his threats to their businesses…. When Trump as a private individual files a lawsuit against a media company, it sends a chilling message: Do not cross me or you will pay."
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Kimberly Wehle's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
