The president not only denied having written the message, he also responded with unsubtle threats. “President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” he wrote online, referring to himself in the third person for reasons unknown.

The Republican added soon after, “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. … 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 ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”

In mid-July, the president did, in fact, file the defamation suit, seeking a jury trial and a judgment of at least $10 billion. Last month, the case flopped when a federal judge dismissed it.

This month, he’s trying again. The Wall Street Journal reported:

President Trump on Wednesday filed a revised lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, after a judge dismissed an earlier complaint that alleged he was defamed by an article about a birthday letter to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. […]

The new complaint alleges that the defendants acted with such malice in several aspects, citing Trump’s repeated denial of any involvement with the letter. Like the previous version, it is seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Time will tell what becomes of the litigation, though recent history suggests that the plaintiff should keep his expectations low. Indeed, recent history is highly relevant.

The Trump campaign’s 2020 case against CNN failed. Trump’s 2021 case against The New York Times failed. Trump’s 2023 case against journalist Bob Woodward failed. The Trump campaign’s case against The Washington Post failed. Trump’s so-called class-action lawsuit against social media giants also failed. (Last year, Trump filed a $15 billion civil suit against The New York Times, which was thrown out four days later, not because it lacked merit, but because a federal judge found that the president’s lawyers’ court filing was simply too ridiculous.)

Americans have never before had a president who sued independent news organizations, individual journalists or both for publishing reports the White House disapproved of, but we have also never before had a president lose so many civil cases while in office.