US President Donald Trump’s legal fight against media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal has taken a sharply personal turn. Trump is demanding that Murdoch, now 94 and reportedly in poor health, testify in court within 15 days – warning that the media baron may not live long enough for the matter to be delayed.

What makes this legal standoff especially dramatic is that the two were once political allies.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a Wall Street Journal article about Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison after being convicted of sex crimes. The report claimed that Trump once sent Epstein a birthday greeting laced with inappropriate content. Trump dismissed the story as entirely false.

“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures,” he wrote on Truth Social. 

According to Trump, he personally phoned Murdoch before the story was published, warning him it was fabricated and threatening legal action. In social media posts, Trump alleges Murdoch promised to “take care of it” — but allowed the article to go to print anyway. “I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his a** off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT.”

Just days after Trump filed the suit, the Journal published a follow-up. This time, it claimed that the Justice Department had informed Trump in May that his name appears among others in its trove of materials related to Epstein.

Once allies

Trump has asked a federal judge in Miami to compel Murdoch to testify under oath within two weeks, citing his advanced age and a 2023 health scare when Murdoch reportedly collapsed during a business meeting in London.

“The way it’s being framed is almost sarcastic,” Joseph Azam, a former senior vice president and legal executive for Murdoch’s newspaper and publishing empire, told NPR. “It’s classic Trump. He is using lawfare, to use his own term, to silence people.”

“The problem is he’s going after people who are equally equipped – and in some ways, I would say, better equipped – to navigate this stuff," Azam told NPR. The unusual demand to seek an urgent deposition of Rupert Murdoch feels like “a gratuitous attempt to poke the bear,” said Azam.

The irony is striking. For years, Murdoch’s media empire – particularly Fox News – has been Trump’s biggest supporter. Fox News helped propel Trump to the presidency and defended him through multiple controversies.

But cracks appeared after Trump’s 2020 election loss. Internal documents from a separate lawsuit revealed that while Fox News publicly supported Trump’s claims about election fraud, privately, Murdoch and his executives knew these claims were false.

Trump has earlier been successful in settling lawsuits against media companies. He's won settlements worth $10-25 million from major corporations including Facebook's parent company, ABC, CBS, and others. However, he has rarely won cases that actually went to trial.

Trump’s past association with Jeffrey Epstein has long lingered as a politically sensitive issue, especially given Epstein’s history of sex trafficking and connections to powerful figures. While Trump has denied any wrongdoing and claims to have cut ties with Epstein years before his arrest, their documented social interactions – from parties at Mar-a-Lago to Trump’s 2002 remark calling Epstein a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women… on the younger side” – have fueled scrutiny.

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