U.S. President Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.
Kevin Lamarque | Ricky Carioti | Via Reuters
Conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch will give President Donald Trump regular updates on his health as part of an agreement to postpone Murdoch’s deposition in Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against him over a Wall Street Journal article about late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The unusual stipulation in Miami federal court comes a week after Trump’s lawyers sought a deposition from Murdoch within 15 days. Their motion had implied that Murdoch might be either dead or too sick to testify in person by the time the case went to trial.
“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,” Trump’s lawyers said in their filing last week.
Murdoch’s new agreement to divulge highly personal information about his health to Trump and his lawyers contrasts sharply with the cozy relationship Murdoch’s Fox News has had with the president over the years.
Fox News, for more than a decade, has acted as a cheerleader for Trump and his policies. The president is an avid watcher of the conservative network, and several of his key administration officials have worked for Fox. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has a show on Fox News.
The new deal, outlined in a court filing jointly filed by Trump’s and Murdoch’s lawyers late Monday night, postpones Murdoch’s deposition in the case until after Judge Darrin Gayles rules on his and other defendants’ motions to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit.
If the judge denies that dismissal motion, Murdoch would have to sit for questioning under oath from Trump’s lawyers within 30 days.
The agreement also calls for discovery in the case to be postponed until Gayles rules on the dismissal motion. Discovery is the part of civil court proceedings in which the parties exchange evidence that is relevant to the dispute, and where they take depositions from various witnesses.
Gayles approved the deal on Tuesday.
Under terms of the deal, Murdoch is now required within three calendar days to give Trump’s lawyers “a sworn declaration describing his current health condition,” according to the stipulation filed Monday.
“Defendant Murdoch has further agreed to provide regularly scheduled updates to Plaintiff regarding his health, including a mechanism for him to alert the Plaintiff if there is a material change to his health,” the filing says.
That mechanism is described in a separately signed agreement, which was not publicly filed with the court.
If Murdoch fails to provide the updates as agreed to in the abatement agreement, he will have to sit for an “expedited” deposition, the filing says.
A spokesman for Trump referred questions about the filing to the president’s statement on Truth Social last month when he filed the lawsuit.
“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,” Trump said at that time.
“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,” Trump wrote.
Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Journal, declined to comment on the new agreement. Dow Jones is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.
Trump’s suit alleges defamation for a Wall Street Journal article in July which said he had sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday card in 2003 for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Trump, who denies writing the note, sued Murdoch; News Corp and its CEO Robert Thomson; Dow Jones & Co.; and the two reporters who wrote the article.
For weeks, the president and the Justice Department have faced criticism for a decision not to release investigative files about Epstein, a former friend of Trump’s, who died by suicide in jail in 2019, after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges.
