• Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch have been allies for years.
• Now Trump is suing the media mogul for $10 billion.
• The case is extraordinary. But Trump and Murdoch both have reasons to settle before it gets to a courtroom.

Donald Trump threatens to sue media companies all the time. Sometimes he actually does it.

But the libel suit Trump filed against Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and two Journal reporters last week — over a story the Journal published about a note Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein — is extraordinary.

Not only is it seemingly the first time a sitting president has sued a media organization, it puts Trump in direct conflict with Murdoch — perhaps Trump's most important backer over the years, via his Fox News operation.

But just because Trump has sued Murdoch doesn't mean we'll see a verdict in the case. Multiple media and tech companies have settled similar cases with Trump since he was elected last fall.

On the face of it, Trump should have a hard time prevailing: US libel laws place the burden on a plaintiff to prove that someone has said something untrue about them, and that burden gets much steeper when that person is a public figure. Murdoch's Journal also has a long tradition of not bending when powerful people threaten it. (On Wednesday, the Journal published another Trump-Epstein story, reporting that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Trump his name appeared multiple times in unreleased documents about the case.)

Still, we are in a different environment than we were before last November's election, and all kinds of institutions have tried to accommodate Trump. Just as important: Murdoch has backed out of fights in the past.

I ran that theory by NPR's David Folkenflik — a longtime Murdoch watcher — this week on the newest episode of my Channels podcast. (Though we spent most of our time chatting about Trump's move to pull $1 billion in funding from NPR and PBS.) Here's an edited excerpt of our conversation.

Peter Kafka: What do you think happens with this suit? Do you think it actually goes to trial? Do you think they settle?

David Folkenflik: Look. Trump — actually, his ostensible future presidential library — has received a lot of money in recent months from settlements. ABC, CBS — which had a truly flimsy case presented against it, essentially legally nonexistent — plus Meta, plus Twitter/X. But a lot of Trump's previous lawsuits have been dismissed.

It wouldn't totally surprise me if it were dismissed here, if Trump would be ultimately OK with that. Because he's gotten the huge headline out of trying to discredit The Wall Street Journal's excellent reporting teams.

It puts Rupert on notice. As well as other elements of the conservative ecosystem — that they don't get a pass, just because they're notionally seen as on his side.

Nobody has done more than Rupert Murdoch to help Trump over the past decade. Murdoch is his own power source. These are two titans.

Two titans who don't necessarily like each other. But they're transactional and they both see the value in getting something from the other one. And Rupert Murdoch does settle lawsuits — like the $787.5 million check he wrote to Dominion Voting Systems, right before that defamation case was supposed to go to trial.

Just before he was supposed to testify.

So if the current price for settling a Donald Trump lawsuit is a $16 million donation to his library, that's a nothingburger for Murdoch, right?

This is something I've been thinking about and talking about with some of Murdoch's people. We've spoken in recent days. I can't predict the future. But Murdoch seems to me like the kind of guy who fights things like this — until he doesn't. Until it's more useful for him not to.

Like if he has to go on the stand or go into depositions at the age of 94 and prepare for those things — he's probably like, "Forget it. Sixteen million? I could care less."

That said, he likes a good story. He didn't kill the Theranos story, which was an exposé by one of his reporters about a blood diagnosis company built on lies, in which he was the largest private investor. And that's to his great credit that he didn't do that.

So I would guess that the excellent legal team of the Journal and Dow Jones fights this right until the point at which it's going to be inconvenient.

Both sides have a pressure point. Trump doesn't want to go to discovery, and have to talk at great length in front of lawyers for Murdoch about his actual relationship with Epstein.

That's a pressure point.

On the other hand, if Murdoch has anything that he may think in the future is going to be in front of federal officials or regulators — like CBS and Paramount, which has its sale about to go through; like the Walt Disney Company, which perennially does — then Murdoch may say $16 million is cheap.

Let's not forget that these alliances work in both directions. Fox News has run interference for Trump pretty much since 2015.

Murdoch won benefits for that, right? The Justice Department under Trump tried to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner because Murdoch had kind of wanted to take over Time Warner.

And when Murdoch wanted to sell to Disney, Trump said 'Go right ahead.' He called it a "great thing."

Trump's only question the morning when he learned about the Disney acquisition of most of Fox's Hollywood assets was calling Murdoch and asking, "Are you gonna hold on to Fox News?" Murdoch says yes. Trump says congratulations.

So would you bet this settles before trial?

Although there's a part of me that believes Murdoch's gonna fight it, these guys are totally transactional. If it didn't happen to have the word "lawsuit" around it, somebody might pay something or send an email to somebody else to resolve this.

These are two billionaires colliding here. But their alliance is probably more useful to them than their fighting.

Unless Trump thinks that he needs this to feed the increasingly radicalized parts of his base that somehow has to be distracted from the idea that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein. Which he obviously did.

• Donald Trump on Friday sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters for defamation.
• The Journal reported Thursday that Trump wrote a "bawdy" birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
• If the suit doesn't settle, the discovery process could raise more questions about Trump's ties to Epstein.

President Donald Trump's latest defamation suit, filed in response to a recent story by The Wall Street Journal, could raise more questions about the president's relationship with the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump on Friday filed the lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson, and Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.

The suit, which seeks at least $10 billion in damages, accuses the group of committing defamation by publishing an article about a suggestive letter bearing Trump's name that the Journal reported was given to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has denied that he wrote the letter.

Chris Mattei, a former federal prosecutor who served as lead attorney for Sandy Hook families in their defamation suit against Alex Jones, told BI that the lawsuit has several possible paths: the defendants move to dismiss the case with a limited discovery process, they skip the motion for dismissal and move instead for an open discovery process, or they settle out of court.

In a statement after the lawsuit was filed, a Dow Jones spokesperson said, "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."

Representatives for News Corp., Trump's legal team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A discovery process

Damon Dunn, a First Amendment and media attorney, told BI that, in order to win his suit at trial, Trump would have to prove the story was false, damaging to his reputation, and published with constitutional or "actual" malice — a high legal standard requiring the plaintiff to prove the defendant knew the statement was false, or acted with reckless disregard for its veracity, when publishing it.

"The provenance of the 'card' appears suspect, but, even so, is it defamatory that one millionaire sent a birthday card to another in 2003 before Epstein was discovered?" Dunn said, referring to the time before Epstein had been convicted of sex crimes.

The discovery process could be limited to whether the Journal published with actual malice, even if it wrongly attributed the card to Trump, Dunn said. That would be similar to when a court dismissed actor Justin Baldoni's defamation case against The New York Times, he added.

However, Mattei said that the Journal may seek reciprocal discovery, meaning it can ask Trump to provide them with any information or evidence he has not only about the writing of the letter but also about his relationship with Epstein, even about the extent to which he may have been aware of Epstein's crimes.

"If Trump's defense is that this was false, then any evidence suggesting that he had a relationship with Epstein, the degree to which that relationship was close or not, would be relevant to the question of whether or not it's likely Trump had any sort of role in this letter," Mattei said. "And so an aggressive Wall Street Journal here would seek broad discovery about the extent of Trump's relationship with Epstein."

Dunn said it's possible the defendants may pursue a reciprocal discovery process, but it would be expensive, and Trump's relationship with Epstein would be of "questionable relevance" to the proceedings, so such a move may not be worth it in the end.

Mattei said he felt Trump's case is unlikely to have merit, describing the suit as Trump's attempt to "explore what kind of power and leverage he has over the American media." Still, the judge will decide how long the procedural elements of the case take to play out.

"There will be some period of weeks where The Wall Street Journal will be able to file its motion to dismiss if it wants to make a request for discovery, the judgment rule on that request could take a little bit more time," Mattei said. "And so if it is indeed contested, you could see the initial phase of this, including discovery, playing out over the next six months."

Trump's long history with Epstein

The suit against Murdoch and the Journal reporters comes as Trump continues to grapple with his ties to Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

Trump has said that he was friends with Epstein for more than 15 years, beginning in the 1980s. The pair were regularly seen socializing at parties, and Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a "terrific guy."

Trump said in 2019 that he and Epstein had a "falling out" in 2004 after a real estate dispute, and he was "not a fan" of his former friend, The New York Times reported.

Publicly available documents related to Epstein's sex trafficking trial have not revealed any wrongdoing by Trump; his name and those of some of his family members were listed in one of Epstein's contact books, and Trump is mentioned as a passenger in flight logs for Epstein's private jets.

As part of his reelection campaign, Trump promised he would make public all the available files related to the government's investigation into Epstein's crimes. The Justice Department published an unsigned memo on July 7 that said it won't release any more "Epstein Files."

In a Saturday post on Truth Social, Trump revisited the idea of releasing more Epstein-related documents, writing that he had asked the Justice Department to "release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval."

"With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request," Trump said in the post. "It will always be more, more, more."

This story has been updated to clarify the legal issues.