President Donald Trump on Monday asked a federal court to compel media mogul Rupert Murdoch to sit for a deposition within 15 days, according to a report published by Reuters.
The request comes just days after the Trump team filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a July 17 article that linked him to disgraced financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Filed on July 18, Trump’s suit names the Journal, its publisher Dow Jones, reporters involved in the story, and Murdoch. At the center of the dispute is an alleged 2003 birthday greeting from Trump to Epstein that reportedly contained a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to shared secrets, the report said.
Trump Claims Murdoch Knew Letter Was Fake
In Monday’s court filing, Trump’s legal team said the president had warned Murdoch before the article’s publication that the letter was “fake,” to which Murdoch allegedly responded he would “take care of it.”
“Murdoch’s direct involvement further underscores Defendants’ actual malice,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, according to Reuters.
US District Judge Darrin Gayles, the report said, has ordered Murdoch to respond by August 4.
Defendants Hold Their Ground
Dow Jones, which declined to comment on the latest filing, had previously stated that The Wall Street Journal stands by its reporting and intends to “vigorously defend” itself.
The WSJ article was published as Trump faced pressure both from Democrats and his own MAGA base over his administration’s reported refusal to release further documents linked to the Department of Justice’s investigation into Epstein who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
