President Trump has filed a $10 billion libel lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal’s parent company Dow Jones and two reporters after the Journal reported Trump had contributed a sketch drawing of a naked woman to a birthday album for serial sex trafficker and rapist Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. CNN has described the lawsuit as an “extraordinary escalation of Trump’s ongoing legal campaign against media companies he views as opponents.”

Trump’s close ties to Epstein are coming under increasing scrutiny as demands grow for the Trump administration to release files on Epstein, who died in prison in 2019. Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed a former Epstein employee told the FBI in 1996 about a troubling encounter with Trump in Epstein’s New York office.