Donald Trump‘s lawyers are asking a federal court for a quick deposition of media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the president’s defamation lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal article about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump’s lawyers request in the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that the court compel the owner of the Wall Street Journal to be deposed within 15 days, in part because of his advanced age. The filing argues Murdoch, 94, “is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares,” which underscores the urgency of having him testify quickly.
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“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” the filing reads.
The Trump lawyers allege Murdoch should be compelled to testify because he spoke to Trump about the story before it was published and is “widely known for having a hands-on approach over editorial decisions related to News Corp’s periodicals.”
“Because Defendants published the Article after President Trump spoke directly with Murdoch and advised him that the letter referenced in the Article was fake, Murdoch’s direct involvement further underscores Defendants’ actual malice and intent behind the decision to publish the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements about President Trump identified in the Complaint,” the filing reads.
The district court has given Murdoch’s lawyers until Aug. 4 to respond to the motion. The Washington Examiner reached out to Dow Jones & Company, the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, over Trump’s motion seeking an expedited deposition of Murdoch.
The filing from the president’s lawyers comes just over a week after Trump’s lawyers filed the lawsuit over a July 17 story published by the Wall Street Journal alleging Trump wrote a crude letter to Epstein, as part of a collection of similar letters written by friends of the late disgraced financier and sex trafficker, for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has denied that he wrote the letter and immediately threatened a lawsuit against the outlet.
Trump filed the defamation lawsuit over the story on July 18, with Dow Jones & Company, News Corp, Murdoch, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, and the two reporters who wrote it listed as defendants. The Wall Street Journal’s publisher has previously said it stands by the report at the center of the lawsuit.
In a Truth Social post shortly after filing the lawsuit, Trump alluded to seeking a deposition from Murdoch and others.
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“I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this month.
Trump’s lawsuit against Murdoch, Dow Jones, and others has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.