Seher Asaf
Live reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Donald Trump is suing Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch and two reporters after the newspaper reported that his name appeared on a "bawdy" 2003 birthday card to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The lawsuit accusing them of libel and slander comes as the US president continues to face scrutiny over his ties to Epstein. Trump denied the Journal report, describing it as "false, malicious, and defamatory".

Amid mounting political pressure, the Trump administration has also sought the release of some court documents relating to the investigation into Epstein.

The Department of Justice has filed a motion asking a court in the Southern District of New York to release grand jury transcripts.

There has been bipartisan support calling for the release of more information, BBC's North America Correspondent Anthony Zurcher writes, highlighting that his long-standing campaign promise to disclose the Epstein files still remains very much relevant six months into his presidency.

We're now closing our live coverage. If you would like to find out more, read our full story.

Caitlin Wilson
US live page editor

With all of the court filings we've told you about tonight, there was a bit of strange hiccup.

As we reported earlier, Trump has filed a lawsuit against Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch, after a report in the newspaper on Thursday claimed that a "bawdy" drawing from the now-president was sent to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 and is included in the so-called Epstein files.

We searched the federal court in Florida and found that a lawsuit had been filed on grounds of libel and slander - but as we waited for a copy of the complaint with details of the accusations, nothing more was filed. And the webpage for the lawsuit included some unusual details, including that Trump was apparently planning to represent himself in the case.

Then we got a confusing update. A person close to Trump's legal team told our US partner CBS News that the lawsuit had in fact not yet been filed - even though we could see that it had, though a copy of the complaint wasn't listed yet.

A few minutes later, we got some more clarity.

Trump posted about the lawsuit on his social media platform Truth Social.

"We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS 'article' in the useless 'rag' that is, The Wall Street Journal," he wrote.

"This historic legal action is being brought against the so-called authors of this defamation, the now fully disgraced WSJ, as well as its corporate owners and affiliates, with Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thomson (whatever his role is!) at the top of the list."

Almost immediately, we saw that a complaint was then listed in the lawsuit with details of the accusations, which included all the information about the suit that we've just reported below.

Trump has finished speaking at the White House, without mentioning any of the legal cases he or his administration have been involved in tonight.

We can now bring you some more details from the lawsuit filed by Trump's attorneys against Rupert Murdoch and the parent company of his newspaper the Wall Street Journal in federal court in Miami.

• Trump is asking the court for no less than $10 billion from the Wall Street Journal's parent company, its owner Rupert Murdoch and two journalists, Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo
• Trump accuses the journalists of passing "off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed" a letter to mark Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday, which Trump has denied
• The lawsuit, filed by Trump attorney Alejandro Brito, claims the newspaper knew the article was false and that they acted in "bad faith, out of disdain and ill-will directed towards [Trump] without any regard for the truth"
• The suit claims Trump's lawyers warned the Wall Street Journal that its upcoming report was false and that it should "cease and desist from publishing"
• The suit says the article was published to millions of people despite the clear journalistic failures of due diligence and accuracy

• The suit says the reach of the news article means "the overwhelming financial and reputational harm suffered by President Trump will continue to multiply"
• The lawsuit is requesting a jury trial over the matter

Image source, Getty Images

Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna from Florida has been speaking to BBC’s Newsnight programme.

Luna says US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to Jeffrey Epstein shows that Trump’s White House is the “most transparent administration in US history”.

Luna, who leads a House task force on declassifying federal secrets, adds that the Wall Street Journal article about a 2003 birthday card sent to Epstein from Trump is part of a “massively orchestrated attempt to discredit and undermine the president”.

“There were a lot of people who were willing to say the president was trying to cover up something when in actuality, behind the scenes, we were flushing a lot of this investigation out,” Luna said.

We're still watching Donald Trump speak at the White House, where he has spent the last few minutes touting what he calls the accomplishments of his first six months in office.

Just before he took the podium, the president posted to his Truth Social account about the lawsuit he has filed against Rupert Murdoch and the parent company of the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

"We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS “article” in the useless “rag” that is, The Wall Street Journal," he writes, touting other lawsuits he has brought against media organisations.

"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," the post says.

Donald Trump has just walked up to the podium during a dinner at the White House with Republican senators.

We'll be listening in and will let you know if he mentions either his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch or the justice department's filing to unseal court documents related to the Epstein case.

Stick with us.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Grand jury testimony is usually protected by law, and considered private information.

Following the Justice Department's motion tonight to release the grand jury transcripts in the 2019 case against Epstein, a federal judge will now weigh whether public interest to know more about the case outweighs the case for keeping the materials secret.

But this argument could be a challenge for the justice department to make, as it's highly unusual that documents like these are unsealed, according to a former federal prosecutor.

"I've been in and around federal criminal cases for over 30 years. I've never heard of this before," Mitchell Epner, a partner at the New York law firm Kudman Trachten Aloe Posner, tells the BBC's US news partner CBS.

There is a huge amount of data contained within these files, all of which would need to be examined and potentially redacted.

Epner says it could take months for documents to released.

"I would not be surprised if a number of people came forward under pseudonyms to object to the release of grand jury material related to them," he says.

"I also would not be surprised if some of the (alleged) victims... came forward and said, 'Yes, we do want things to be revealed.'"

We are combing through the Department of Justice's court filing and can now bring you some more information about what it says.

The department has asked a New York federal judge to unseal transcripts from the grand jury involved in the government's 2019 sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein.

In the US, grand juries asses evidence and vote on whether to bring criminal charges against defendants. Their undertakings usually remain private.

In its filing on Friday evening, the justice department said it was motivated to ask for this reversal of convention by intense public interest in the Epstein case.

"Public officials, lawmakers, pundits, and ordinary citizens remain deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter," says the motion, signed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

"Notably, the privacy interests at stake on the other side of the balance are substantially diminished due to Epstein’s death," it added.

The department said if the motion is granted, it would work with court officials to redact the documents to prevent personally identifying information of Epstein's alleged victims from being released.

"For these reasons, this court should conclude that the Epstein and Maxwell cases qualify as a matter of public interest, release the associated grand jury transcripts, and lift any pre-existing protective orders."

There is no guarantee that this request would be granted by a judge.

The Department of Justice has filed a motion asking the court in the Southern District of New York to release grand jury transcripts relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

We are still waiting for more on Trump's lawsuit but preliminary court documents show it was filed in the Southern District of Florida federal court in Miami.

Besides the Wall Street Journal's parent company and owner Rupert Murdoch, the two reporters who broke the story yesterday are also listed as defendants: Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.

According to their staff profile on the paper's website, Safdar is an enterprise reporter based in New York while Palazzolo is an investigative reporter.

Palazzolo has won three Pulitzer Prizes, most recently this year, while Khadeeja Safdar was a finalist in 2020.

Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit suing Rupert Murdoch, and his organisations News Corporation and Dow Jones & Company for libel, assault and slander.

The other defendants listed on the suit are Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo, both reporters for the Wall Street Journal.

Sarah Smith
North America editor

The publication of the Wall Street Journal's report of a birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein with Donald Trump's name on it adds to the intense pressure Trump has been under to release files relating to Epstein.

Some of the president’s closest allies have been saying for years that they believe there is a secret list of Epstein’s clients that he was using to blackmail powerful individuals and they promised to make it public if Trump was re-elected.

Many of Trump’s most ardent supporters simply did not believe the Department of Justice when it said there was “no credible evidence” of this conspiracy theory.

In response the president has told his attorney general to seek the public release of evidence that was prepared for the prosecution of Jeffery Epstein.

Image source, Getty Images

House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he spoke to Trump this morning about what he calls "the latest ridiculous smear" against the president.

"The truth? President Trump is the most attacked political figure in American history and still the most resilient. The more they come after him, the stronger he gets," he said in a post on X, external.

Johnson also shared a short video from an interview with CNBC during which he said Trump is "so frustrated by it".

"He's going to wind up suing some of the media outlets that put all this out there," he added.

Image source, Getty Images

Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch was in the president's box at last week's Fifa Club World Cup final with Trump.

That was just days before the newspaper published its story reporting that the president's name appeared on a "bawdy" 2003 birthday card sent to Jeffrey Epstein.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also watched from the private box during the event in New Jersey on Sunday.

As we've been reporting, Trump said the newspaper and Murdoch "were warned directly" that they would be sued if they printed the story.

Image source, Getty Images

Moving away from the White House now, we've seen a letter from a Democratic senator who claims the FBI and justice department review into the Epstein files was done "haphazardly".

The leader of the Senate Judiciary Democrats, Dick Durbin, sent the letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, seeking answers about the handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Durbin says he received information that FBI staff were "pressured" to take 24-hour shifts to review some 100,000 files on Epstein on a two week deadline.

The review was done "haphazardly" and many of the staff lacked the expertise to deal with information on child victims and witnesses, he claims.

He also alleges that staff were also instructed to "flag" any records in which President Trump was mentioned.

Durbin questioned the veracity of some of Bondi's public claims, including when in February she told Fox News that a "client list" was "sitting on my desk right now". The administration has since claimed there is no "client list".

The letter also expresses Durbin's concern about footage released from outside Epstein's jail cell on the night of his suicide. The Department of Justice (DoJ) has said it's raw footage, but Durbin says "the footage was likely modified".

The BBC has contacted the DoJ and FBI for comment.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

President Trump just walked out of the room.

Several reporters fired questions at him, including one about why he hasn't ordered the release of more documents.

He did not answer, only glancing back briefly to say "thank you" at the media.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

About 30 minutes into the event, Epstein is yet to be mentioned.

This event was never intended to be a news conference, and Trump has kept very much to the subject at hand: cryptocurrencies.

Much of his speech has been recognition of those in the crowd, ranging from lawmakers such as House Speaker Mike Johnson to the Winklevoss twins. He's peppered his remarks with jokes, and appears to be in a good mood.

The press is penned behind velvet ropes on the far side of the room. Once he finishes speaking, questions will surely be shouted in his direction - but it would be unusual for him to respond.

He then moves onto immigration, a topic he brings up at many, perhaps most, of his public events.

We're now seeing Trump has stepped away from his podium, we're yet to see if he'll answer any questions from the press. We'll keep you updated if he does.

Ali Abbas Ahmadi
Live reporter

As Trump continues to speak at a ceremony in the White House, we're listening across to see if he makes mention of the Epstein files. We'll keep you up to speed with the latest from the US president.

The documents that Trump has ordered to be released include only the testimony that was heard by the grand jury before Epstein's death, Carl Tobias, a professor at University of Richmond's School of Law, tells the BBC.

He adds that these testimonies were used to determine whether the prosecution had enough evidence to continue to trial.

There's so much evidence that was collected and it is likely being kept by the FBI or the Department of Justice - and we cannot even be sure if these court documents will be released, he says.

Attorney General Pam Bondi will have to "convince the judge who convened the grand jury at the time to make them public," he says.

"They're sensitive - and you always want to protect the information, the informants if you will, people who might have testified, the children allegedly abused, all those kinds of questions."

Bondi needs to "show why it's in the public interest to know release them", Tobias explains.

He added that the details in the documents could be redacted, saying that is a "tool the judge could use to limit what then becomes public information".

The professor adds that it is difficult to know how long this process will take. It depends on "how much of it raises questions that trouble the judge... and how many resources the judge has", Tobias says.

Image source, AFP

Trump has entered the East Room of the White House to attend the ceremony during which he'll sign new cryptocurrency legislation, known as the Genius Act, into law.

We don't yet know if he'll speak about Epstein, but we'll bring you the key lines here if he does.

And, you can follow along - just click watch live.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

I've just entered the East Room of the White House - where dozens of reporters are crammed along one side, with attendees seated in rows in front of the podium.

It's a bit hard to see from here, but walking in I caught sight of Vice President JD Vance.

After doing a round of handshakes, he sat down next to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. They're both laughing, and appear to be in good moods, although I can't hear over the sounds of classical music being played on loudspeakers.

This event is focused on cryptocurrency legislation - Trump will certainly speak, although there is by no means a guarantee he'll address the call for the release of court documents relating to Epstein.

I've been in this room on many previous occasions, and they've sometimes resulted in long speeches from Trump - and on one occasion recently, an impromptu press conference that took even White House staff by surprise.