White House press secretary Leavitt removed Wall Street Journal from Scotland trip press pool over Epstein reporting

On July 21, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt removed the Wall Street Journal from the 13-outlet press pool set to cover President Trump's upcoming trip to Scotland, saying the change was made "due to the Wall Street Journal's fake and defamatory conduct" — a reference to the paper's July 17 report that Trump had sent Jeffrey Epstein a bawdy 50th-birthday letter, which Trump denied writing. The White House had taken direct control of press-pool assignments from the White House Correspondents' Association earlier in 2025.

White House Correspondents' Association president Weijia Jiang called the move "deeply troubling" and a First Amendment violation, saying "government retaliation against news outlets based on the content of their reporting should concern all who value free speech and an independent media." A Dow Jones spokesperson separately said the company had "full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting."

Removing an outlet from the press pool covering a presidential trip, explicitly because of its reporting rather than any logistical or security rationale, denies that outlet's readers direct coverage of the president as a consequence of unfavorable journalism.