President Trump’s lawyers are moving to depose Rupert Murdoch, and quickly.
The president’s attorneys in a new court filing Monday said they wish to speak with the conservative media mogul as part of evidence-gathering efforts in connection with Trump’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, citing concerns about Murdoch’s waning health and advanced age. Murdoch is 94 years old.
This lawsuit arose from The Wall Street Journal’s article that described an album allegedly compiled by Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell for his 50th birthday in 2003.
According to the report, Trump contributed a letter for the birthday collection that included a lewd drawing and referenced the two men sharing a “wonderful secret.” President Trump has dismissed the letter as fake.
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is crude—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.
Trump filed the complaint in federal court in Miami earlier this month against the Journal, the Journal’s publishing firm Dow Jones, parent company News Corp, owner Rupert Murdoch, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, and the two Journal reporters, Safdar and Palazzolo. He alleges two claims, defamation per se and defamation per quod, and demands $10 billion in damages.
On Monday, Trump filed a motion to compel the expedited deposition de bene esse of Murdoch, a de bene esse deposition is also sometimes called a “preservation deposition,” and is intended to be taken to preserve testimony for trial.
Law and Crime reports:
“[T]here is good cause to expedite Murdoch’s deposition, and the Court should exercise its discretion to authorize the same,” the motion for fast-tracked discovery says.
“Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York,” wrote Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito. “Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial.”
In the meantime, though, Trump is demanding crucial testimony from the owner of the Journal, whom Trump apparently failed to persuade not to publish the Epstein exclusive in the first place. The plaintiff insists that Murdoch has an “advantage” that Trump does not have, but that the scales would even out were an expedited deposition to occur.
“Murdoch has an advantage over President Trump as Murdoch is able to defend himself because he has access to all the information and documents related to the below-defined malicious and defamatory Article, and the decision behind deciding to publish it,” the motion continued. “On the other hand, President Trump has very limited information related to the Article. For these and other reasons that follow, Murdoch would not suffer any prejudice significant enough to outweigh the good cause that exists to grant this Motion.”
Read Trump’s motion here.
