Lawyers for President Donald Trump on Monday said that Rupert Murdoch, because of his advanced age, should be deposed within 15 days in the president’s $10 billion libel lawsuit against him and The Wall Street Journal over an article about the president’s connections with Jeffrey Epstein.
In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Trump’s lawyers said Murdoch, the media mogul founder of News Corp, which owns the Journal, should be deposed as soon as possible because he is 94 years old and “has suffered, but thankfully overcome, multiple health issues throughout his life” and would be unlikely to be able to appear in person at a trial.
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“President Trump is requesting only to conduct Murdoch’s deposition and have him produce documents associated only with his involvement in, and any discussions related to, the decision to publish the article,” the filing said.
Trump sued the Journal on July 18, a day after the newspaper published an article about a lewd birthday note that the publication said Trump wrote to Epstein in 2003, five years before the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The note was accompanied by a sexually suggestive drawing. Trump has denied he was responsible for the letter or the drawing, calling it a “fake thing.”
The request from Trump’s lawyers Monday cited an episode in 2023 when Murdoch fainted during a breakfast in London with one of his executives, Rebekah Brooks. It also noted an article from Vanity Fair that said Murdoch had been hospitalized in recent years for COVID-19 and “a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon.”
The motion also said that Murdoch, as the director and majority owner of News Corp, “sits in the unique position of having readily available all documents, communications, and other information related to the article and the decision to publish it.”
The lawyers added that Murdoch had “an advantage” over Trump because he had access to information about the published article, while Trump “has very limited information.”
A representative for Murdoch did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the publisher of the Journal, previously said in a statement: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
Along with Murdoch, Trump sued Dow Jones; News Corp, the parent company of Dow Jones; Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, and the two reporters who wrote the article.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.