Trump scrambles to resurrect lawsuit distancing self from Epstein scandal

President Donald Trump is taking a second crack at suing the Wall Street Journal over bombshell claims regarding Jeffrey Epstein.Trump refiled a defamation suit against the newspaper Wednesday over its report about a crude birthday card it claimed Trump sent Epstein — a card Trump claimed didn't exist despite it later being released as part of the Epstein investigation.An earlier case was tossed for not meeting standards required for defamation cases.The card featured a salacious message wishing the billionaire child trafficker that every day be a wonderful secret and outlined by a crude doodle of an undressed woman.Trump's first lawsuit against the Journal was rejected by Miami-based U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. Gayles found that the lawsuit failed to allege the Journal acted with actual malice, which is required in defamation suits brought by public figures under the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case.The updated suit was rewritten to address this, with Trump's lawyers alleging the paper “recklessly disregarded whether the Defamatory Statements were true.”Trump has a long history of threatened and actual legal action against newspapers that publish damaging information on him, and sometimes threatens specific journalists like longtime New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.