Trump to Rupert: If You Show Me Yours, I Won’t Show You Mine

Donald Trump’s lawyer just filed a clown motion to depose Rupert Murdoch in his WSJ lawsuit immediately (the court already approved Dow Jones’ uncontested request to extend the response date to September 22).

As justification, Trump’s lawyer argues, in part, that Rupert is old and might kick off before things slowly get around to discovery in a year’s time or so, if they even get that far.

Murdoch’s age and health warrant conducting his deposition on an expedited basis. Murdoch recently turned 94 years old and has suffered, but thankfully overcome, multiple health issues throughout his life. Moreover, upon information and belief, Murdoch resides in New York, New York, which is well over 100 miles from this District. Thus, it is presumable, both because of his age and health and/or his distance from this Court, that Murdoch will be unavailable for trial. See Supra Glass, 2024 WL 1558712, at *3 (granting motion for deposition de bene esse and finding that witnesses were unavailable for trial under 32(a)(4)(B)).

Among the things Trump is subpoenaing is any digital communication about the July 17 article reporting that a letter from Donald Trump was included in a 2003 birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein. Another is phone records about whom he spoke with on it.

7. Any text messages, iMessages, WhatsApp messages, Slack messages, Signal messages, WeChat messages, or any other form of digital communication on any mobile device related to the Article that You have sent or received.

8. Documents sufficient to show a log of the calls You made and received, on any landline or mobile phone number, from July 10, 2025 through July 25, 2025 related to the Article.

But the only proof that Trump presents that he did speak with Murdoch is an unvalidated screen cap of Trump’s Truth Social post posted after the fact to that effect (when Hunter Biden tried to submit such things in a court filing, DOJ successfully rejected it).

Worse still, the post falsely claims that WSJ “printed” “the supposed letter.”

That’s not even what the lawsuit alleges, which claims that WSJ stated that Trump authored, drew, and signed the letter in question.

17. Therein, Defendants falsely and maliciously stated that President Trump supposedly authored, drew, and signed a letter wishing Epstein a happy fiftieth birthday.

While the WSJ did say that Trump’s signature appeared where pubic hair might go, it specifically said that it did not know how the letter was produced.

It described that Ghislaine Maxwell collected letters from friends, including Trump.

She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

It described that the letter bore his name, and that his signature appeared.

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

And it specifically said it did not know how the letter was prepared — disavowing knowledge of whether Trump “authored, drew, [or] signed” the letter himself.

It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared.

Trump provides no proof the emails or calls he describes actually occurred. He doesn’t provide his own phone records (or even, proof that he’s the one who posted the Truth Social post, something that took Jack Smith quite a bit of work regarding Trump’s January 6 tweets).

And curiously, Trump wants to know to whom Rupert was talking about all this starting on July 10, five days before the alleged phone call to Rupert (and wants to know to whom Rupert spoke for a full week after Trump filed the lawsuit, going through the second story on the Epstein book).

It’s a stunt. Among other things, it reveals that Trump doesn’t think Rupert plotted all this on Truth Social!

Update: Judge Darrin Gayles has given Rupert until August 4 to respond to the request.