The president often shrugged or smiled as their reporting was described, and he shook some of the winners' hands. When it was his time to speak, the president joked that it had "not been an easy evening" hearing about their work. Last July, Trump sued The Wall Street Journal, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the journalists and publishers who contributed to the WSJ's reporting on an alleged birthday letter he sent to Epstein, which the president claims does not exist. Trump has repeatedly denied writing the letter and denied that a signature on the document is his. Trump's lawsuit "does not include a single plausible allegation" that The Wall Street Journal knowingly published false statements about him, lawyers for the defendants wrote in response to the lawsuit last year.