By Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose
(Reuters) -Donald Trump said on Tuesday the Wall Street Journal and its billionaire owner Rupert Murdoch want to settle the U.S. president’s defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
On July 18, Trump sued the Journal and its owners, including Murdoch, over a story, which said Trump’s name was on a birthday greeting for late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, that included a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to shared secrets.
“I’ve been treated badly by the Wall Street Journal. I would have assumed that Rupert Murdoch controls it, but, you know, maybe does, maybe doesn’t,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“They are talking to us about doing something but we’ll see what happens. Maybe they would like us to drop that, so we’ll see … yeah, they’re having, they want to settle it,” he said, adding, “when I get treated unfairly, I do things about it.”
Trump’s lawsuit called the alleged birthday greeting “fake” and said the Journal published its article to harm the president’s reputation.
In a court filing on Monday, Trump asked a U.S. court to order a swift deposition for Murdoch.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Murdoch and the Journal deferred comment to Dow Jones.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Edinburgh, Scotland and Nandita Bose in Washington, Additional reporting by Helen Coster and Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Nick Zieminski)
