The right-wing media ecosystem has been clamoring for information on Jeffrey Epstein for years. It was briefly up in arms when Donald Trump’s Justice Department announced in July that it would not be releasing more material on the case, before largely tabling the issue and rallying behind the president — even as it was revealed that his name appears in the so-called Epstein files multiple times.
The Wall Street Journal — which in July reported on a salacious birthday letter Trump gave Epstein in the early 2000s — revealed on Monday that Congress had obtained the letter from Epstein’s estate, and published a copy of it. It’s an interesting development considering Trump and his supporters vociferously denied the letter’s existence earlier this summer, with Trump even suing the Journal over its story for $10 billion.
Well, the letter exists, as does a trove of other material the Epstein estate provided to Congress — some of which further fleshes out the president’s weird relationship with the convicted sex offender. One might think that all of the conservatives who claimed to be so concerned with sex trafficking would be celebrating the release of this material. They are far more concerned with protecting the president, though, and thus they are straining to pretend that Trump’s letter to Epstein is fake or that the signature on the note — which is very clearly Trump’s — doesn’t actually belong to him.
“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, who called the Journal’s initial report “utter bullshit,” continued to call the story “BS” after the letter’s publication, writing on X that “Democrats don’t care” about Epstein or his victims. (It’s Trump, of course, who has repeatedly called the Epstein case a “hoax,” as his Justice Department reaches out not to Epstein’s victims, but to the sex offender’s accomplice, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.)
James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which obtained the material, said he “takes the president’s word” that the signature that is clearly the president’s is somehow a fabrication. So did House Speaker Mike Johnson, who deferred to the White House. The president, for his part, told NBC News in an interview on Tuesday that the letter is a “dead issue.”
Several MAGA influencers dutifully towed the line, claiming on X that the signature at the bottom of the birthday letter does not match Trump’s signature. “Does the below from the WSJ look like this actual signature from the President?” Charlie Kirk asked on X. “I don’t think so at all. Fake.” Benny Johnson wondered if the letter was “the best they could do,” adding that “Trump has the most famous signature in the world,” and that it’s “time to sue them into the oblivion.”
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Kirk and Johnson both attached versions of Trump’s signature that differ from the one on the letter, but Trump’s signature has varied significantly over the years. The two “real” examples that Kirk and Johnson shared, for instance, don’t really resemble each other outside of the EKG-style black Sharpie for which Trump is known to sign things, including the letter to Epstein.
The Journal, The New York Times, and others compared Trump’s signature on the letter to other Trump signatures from around the same time period, and even some over a decade earlier. They’re nearly identical, with Trump’s signature on the 2003 letter matching signatures from various letters and documents dated 1987, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2006.
There is of course no amount of evidence that will deter the White House, Republicans in Congress, and MAGA commentators online from abdicating Trump of any wrongdoing. They have, by this point, learned from the president that if they deny reality with enough fervency, and for long enough, that the media — and thus public opinion — will eventually start bending to their will.
It’s already happening with Epstein. CNN’s John Berman on Tuesday morning tried to bat down the idea that Trump may have taken part in Epstein’s criminal activity, in part by noting that Maxwell — a convicted sex trafficker and alleged perjurer who even House Speaker Johnson said he wouldn’t believe — recently told the Justice Department Trump was a “gentlemen” and that she never heard about him doing anything inappropriate with masseuses.
“Take this for what it is,” Berman said, “but Ghislaine Maxwell said she never saw Donald Trump, or anyone for that matter, engaged in any wrongdoing connected with Epstein.”
From Rolling Stone US
