Tampa judge finds no actual malice in 2023 report
A federal judge last week threw out Trump Media and Technology Group’s $3.8 billion defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post, ruling the company failed to meet the high evidentiary bar required to take the case to trial.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Patrick Barber, a Trump appointee based in Tampa, wrote in a summary docket entry that Trump Media “failed to present evidence that would allow a jury to find by clear and convincing evidence” that the Post “published the allegedly defamatory statements with actual malice,” according to the ruling first reported by Reason. Barber said a full written opinion would be forthcoming.
The suit stemmed from a 2023 Post article that reported Trump Media was sourcing funds from “an obscure financial entity with connections to a Caribbean-island bank that bills itself as a top payment service for adult entertainment sites” as it built what became the Truth Social platform. The article alleged the company paid a $240,000 “finder’s fee” for arranging an $8 million loan deal with ES Family Trust, and that the fee’s recipient was Entoro Securities, a brokerage linked to the chief executive of Digital World, a shell company that merged with TMTG in 2024.
The Post published a correction to its original article in May. “Discovery in the ongoing litigation has established that Trump Media didn’t pay a loan referral fee of $240,000, as was stated in the article and was based on The Post’s reporting at the time of publication,” the correction read. “In addition, a related mention in the article that Trump Media and its publicly traded merger partner didn’t disclose the payment to shareholders or the Securities and Exchange Commission was inaccurate because no such payment was made.”
Trump Media’s lawsuit had argued that the Post acted maliciously in reporting the story, calling it an “egregious hit piece” and claiming the newspaper had engaged in a “years-long crusade” against Trump. Barber found that the absence of malice evidence doomed the suit and granted the summary judgment the Post had sought in April.
In a statement, a Post spokesperson welcomed the ruling. “We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to reviewing its written order upon release,” she said.
Trump Media indicated it may appeal. “After three years, The Washington Post finally admitted its harmful story was false,” the company said in a statement. “We believe a jury should decide whether these falsehoods were actionable and will evaluate whether to appeal last week’s ruling in due course. We will also continue to hold the media accountable.”
The case is the latest in a series of legal defeats for Trump and his affiliated entities in defamation suits against news organizations. In April, a different Florida judge dismissed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over a story about a letter Trump wrote to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Seven months earlier, a third Florida judge tossed a $15 billion claim against the New York Times and book publisher Penguin, before Trump filed an amended complaint. Also in April, Trump Media dropped a defamation claim against The Guardian over a 2023 report about federal inquiries into its loans.