On Thursday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that a strange and “bawdy” letter Donald Trump apparently sent to Jeffrey Epstein was found in an album Ghislaine Maxwell gave to Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump says the letter, which reportedly includes his signature incorporated into a drawing of a naked woman, is a fake, and he’s vowing to sue the Journal. Numerous questions remain about the letter and how its existence may or may not have influenced the White House’s recent decision not to release the so-called Epstein files to the public. What is clear is the letter and its contents will intensify an already tumultuous scandal for Trump and his administration. Here are the latest developments, including commentary, analysis, and reactions.
“Not to be less than $10 billion,” actually, which is roughly twice what Trump is now worth. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Read the full legal complaint against the Wall Street Journal, publisher Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch, and the two reporters who wrote the story here.
Trump also announced the lawsuit in a Truth Social post on Friday night:
We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS “article” in the useless “rag” that is, The Wall Street Journal. This historic legal action is being brought against the so-called authors of this defamation, the now fully disgraced WSJ, as well as its corporate owners and affiliates, with Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thomson (whatever his role is!) at the top of the list. …. This lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite President, ME, but also in order to continue standing up for ALL Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media. I hope Rupert and his “friends” are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
A Dow Jones spokesperson said in response, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
Per the Associated Press:
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filed motions urging the court to release the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against convicted British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell a day after President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to do so. …
The Justice Department said it will work with with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.
But as Elie Honig pointed out this morning, this move is “likely to result in the actual release of little, if any, new information.”
CNBC reported:
Trump filed a lawsuit related to alleged libel, assault or slander against [Rupert] Murdoch, the [Wall Street] Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co., and the two reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida, according to that court’s docket.
The civil complaint was not immediately available.
Politico’s Michael Kruse says the birthday letter report very well might have helped Trump do something he was really struggling to do — change the stubborn Epstein narrative:
[Trump] has and always has had a real instinct for story — not just the ephemera of gossip, which he loves, but big, long-arc, animating sort of superstories, too. One of the most powerful stories in human history is us against them. And it’s been fuel for Trump’s electoral rise and rule — the notion he’s stoked that he’s an avenger for regular people who are the us set against elites and other assorted foes that make up the them. The Epstein story isn’t going away (or at least wasn’t?) because it complicates this superstory. It suggests to the legions who’ve been partial to Trump that actually maybe that’s not right — that actually maybe he’s less one of us and more part of them. In this way the Journal reporting was perhaps not so much a blow as a boon. Once again, the elite media was taking on MAGA’s champion. The response of the base suggests a return to alignment.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois is seeking answers about the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, asking for clarification of some of the government’s public statements in letters sent to Attorney General Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel But in his missives, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary revealed a new detail, alleging that his office was told that FBI personnel were directed to “flag” any of the Epstein records that made mention of Trump:
According to information my office received, Attorney General Bondi then pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD), including the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), which handles all requests submitted by the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act, on 24- hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.
This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests.
My office was told that these personnel were instructed to “flag” any records in which President Trump was mentioned.
Among the questions Durbin asks of Bondi and Patel are queries about whether they personally have examined the Epstein files, an explanation for why Trump-related records were flagged, as well as asking if the government reviewed the alleged letter from Trump to Epstein reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In between online threats to sue Rupert Murdoch and the Journal, it’s largely been business as usual for Trump as he navigates the latest news cycle. This afternoon, the president held a White House signing event for the “GENIUS Act,” Congress’s first major cryptocurrency bill that establishes a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
But Trump ignored shouted questions from the assembled media about Epstein and whether he authored that letter to the late financier.
Though Trump gave Attorney General Bondi the go-ahead to begin the process of releasing pertinent grand-jury testimony from the Epstein investigation, it will likely be a while before members of the public will see any of the potential records. ABC News has more:
It’s not immediately clear from the social media postings how extensive the administration’s request to unseal the transcripts would be.
The release of any grand jury materials, which are secret, would be subject to a legal process and the approval of a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was charged before he died by suicide in 2019.
A judge would likely consider the impact of the release on victims, which courts have gone to great lengths to protect, as well as any parties who may be implicated in the case and want the information to remain secret.
Trump’s Republican allies have railed against The Wall Street Journal following the release of its Trump-Epstein piece. But one member of Congress took it a step further. Randy Fine, a Republican Florida congressman who recently came under fire for bigoted posts against his colleague Representative Ilhan Omar, said he planned to take action to cancel the House’s subscription to the newspaper. Yes, really:
Here’s another example of how Trump does talk like that. In the Epstein letter, there’s the line:
Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Trump has frequently used the teases “I won’t tell you what it is,” “I won’t tell you what,” and “I won’t tell you” in his remarks over the years.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! in December 2015:
You know, last cycle, if you had a million people or 2 million people, they would have considered it like a big event and, frankly, nobody wanted, you know, the networks didn’t want the debates. And then something happened this cycle, and I won’t tell you what it is, and Fox had 24 million people and everyone said what happened.
At a November 2016 rally in Pennsylvania:
It’s just been announced that the residents of Pennsylvania are going to experience a massive double digit premium hike. So high that I won’t tell you what it is, it’s very high.
In 2018 remarks at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington:
I think it’s one of the worst trade deals ever entered into. I rate it second; I won’t tell you what the first is.
During a 2019 NRA event:
One of the gravest threats to the Second Amendment, and to American freedom itself, are activist judges. You see it every day. Every day. They almost always file in a certain little jurisdiction; I won’t tell you what it is, but you all know.
At a 2022 rally in North Carolina:
You know, he had a poll today, I won’t tell you what it is. I’m not going to tell you what this poll was, but his district loved him.
During an October 2024 rally in Iowa:
Don’t forget the Democrats start with an advantage. I won’t tell you what the advantage is, but different people automatically vote.
At the 2024 Alfred E. Smith dinner:
They are panicking because you know the votes that are coming and are coming in very, very strong a certain way. I won’t tell you what way that is, but Chuck Schumer is here looking very glum. Doesn’t he look glum? He looks glum.
Back in March at the Justice Department:
I used to speak to President Putin a lot about it. I said: “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” I won’t tell you what the consequence was. I won’t tell you what he—but if he believed even 5 percent of what I said, then he would say, “I’m not going to do it,” and I think he did.
And there are numerous additional examples of these or similar teases.
And Trump isn’t delivering it, which could be part of the problem for his supporters, as I note in my new post:
[I]n MAGA-world, you don’t have to be a full-on rabbit-hole dweller who buys into the more cosmic interpretations of Epstein’s significance to be bitterly disappointed by Trump’s “nothing to see here” dismissal of a long-awaited moment when the veil hiding the many crimes of the opposition would begin to lift. Perhaps for many, the files were just an appetizer for the revelations that would bring the heavy hand of justice down on the many devils of the MAGA imagination.
The underlying reality is that for all of Trump’s audacious actions since taking office, he has failed, so far, to fully undertake the campaign of retribution he promised his supporters again and again and again on the campaign trail.
The show trials could still happen, I fear:
[T]he most likely way out of the political trap Trump has laid for himself is to scratch the itch that underlies the Epstein furor. Yes, he needs a distraction to change the subject. But for his base, the best distraction would be some investigations, arrests, perp walks, show trials, and consequences for the terrible villains who wrecked the country for so long.
Read the rest here.
Another line in the letter — which Trump and his allies are repeatedly saying doesn’t sound like him — is “A pal is a wonderful thing.” He has frequently used the second part of that phrase.
In an August 2004 Esquire article Trump wrote:
Going through tough times is a wonderful thing, and everybody should try it. Once.
In an October 2004 NBC Dateline interview:
A pregnancy is never — it’s a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband, it’s certainly an inconvenience for a business. And whether people want to say that or not, the fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business.
In a 2011 interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network:
And you know I’ve had a good relationship with the church over the years. I think religion is a wonderful thing.
On Fox News in 2015:
Eminent domain when it comes to jobs, roads, the public good – I think it’s a wonderful thing.
At a July 2018 political rally in Montana:
Your skies. I heard so much about your skies. I flown in, I looked at those skies. Not seeing pollution is a wonderful thing, right?
During a April 2020 COVID Task Force press conference:
You know, the free market is a wonderful thing. It’s amazing how it can work.
And in a 2023 Meet the Press interview:
The opposition, not quite as good, said this morning, oh, having open borders is a wonderful thing. I don’t know why.
As Trump and his allies insist that the letter described in the Journal’s reporting doesn’t sound like something he would say, internet sleuths have started to dig into the text and the president’s past words. On one side, people like the Federalist’s Sean Davis have suggested the word “enigma” is not in Trump’s vocabulary:
Grok was wrong. The word was used in several of Trump’s own books:
Now whether that word came from Trump or potentially one of his known ghostwriters is a subject for another tweet, but Trump also used the word at a 2015 political rally, and there’s video proof:
Grok, by the way, eventually figured it out, too:
Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide, weighed in on the Journal report to CNN, suggesting that the article could help to unite the president’s supporters who found themselves divided on how the White House has handled the Epstein issue.
“We are finally on offense,” he said. “President Trump has had enough and is fighting back –against his real enemies.”
In recent days, Trump has sought to quell the conservative backlash to his administration’s review of the Epstein case. At the same time, the president was also doing everything in his power to prevent the Journal from publishing its piece about the alleged letter Trump sent to Epstein. Rolling Stone has more:
Some of this effort, multiple sources in and close to the White House have been telling Rolling Stone this week, has included a days-long mission — led by an incensed president — to try to kill the Journal report on the letter to Epstein, which has now seen the light of day.
One administration official describes the White House as having been “on a fucking warpath” in its pressure campaign against the conservative newspaper, working different contacts and angles in an attempt to get the outlet to drop the story. This official notes this was rated a top “priority” by Trump, and dominated various conversations within the West Wing and elsewhere this week.
As I write in my new post, Trump’s net approval was sliding down before any of this Epstein insanity hit:
The available polling was largely conducted just before the Epstein scandal really exploded at the end of this week. But the numbers already showed a distinct contrast with Trump’s triumphant mood in the wake of the enactment of his One Big Beautiful Bill. In the most reliable polling averages, from Silver Bulletin, Trump’s job-approval ratio now stands at 43.8 percent positive, 52.7 percent negative. His net approval rating of minus-8.9 percent is the lowest since April 30 when market jitters over his tariff program were peaking (he hit his second-term low with minus-9.7 percent on April 29). And it’s a significant slide from the net approval average of minus-4.2 percent on June 22.
There isn’t much polling data from after the Epstein scandal began, but what there is doesn’t look good for the president:
A new July 15 and 16 survey from Reuters-Ipsos showed 69 percent of Americans believe the Trump administration is hiding details from the Epstein files; 54 percent (including 30 percent of Republicans) disapprove of his handling of the controversy as compared to 17 percent (and just 35 percent of Republicans) who approve.
Read the rest here.
Trump’s eldest enters the chat:
My father has a very specific way of speaking. People all over the world have mimicked it for decades. The insanity written in the Wall Street Journal, AIN’T IT and everyone knows it. Also in 47 years I’ve never seen him doodle once. Give me a break with the fake “journalisming’
Again: Trump may not be a doodler, but he has definitely doodled.
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled that the Justice Department was ready to unseal the grand jury transcripts at the center of the Epstein case after receiving the official green light from an exasperated Trump. But Representative Dan Goldman of New York took to social media and suggested Bondi is overselling the potential revelations from these documents.
Goldman, a former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of New York, wrote that the promised documents from Bondi will be limited in scope and will likely fail to address the bigger questions at hand:
Our old friend Eric Levitz argues at Vox that while Trump’s Epstein files debacle is indeed a distraction from the considerable damage his administration is doing to the country — it’s still a “political no brainer” for Democrats to focus on the issue. Among his reasons is how this scandal is not like others:
It is true that Democratic agitation over Trump’s past scandals — his courting of illegal Russian assistance in 2016, alleged obstruction of justice in 2017, efforts to coerce the Ukrainian government into abetting his reelection in 2019, and attempt to foment an insurrection in 2021 — all failed to durably damage his political brand.
But Trump’s base was behind him in all of those instances. Today, by contrast, major right-wing influencers are validating the Democratic Party’s narrative that a Republican White House is hiding something. And Trump’s attempts to shut down discussion of the Epstein case have gotten him “ratioed” on his own social media platform.
Generally speaking, when you have an opportunity to increase the salience of an issue that divides your opposition, it’s wise to do so.
This is especially true when that issue also pits your adversary against majority opinion. And in trying to persuade the broad electorate that the Trump administration is mishandling the Epstein case — possibly, for nefarious reasons — Democrats are pushing on an open door.
Read the rest here.
Many in the Democratic Party were quick to comment on the alleged letter from Trump to Epstein, pointing to the Journal’s reporting as more evidence that the president has something to hide.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California cast doubt on Trump’s claim that he didn’t write the letter:
Representative Shri Thanedar of Michigan shared an excerpt of the article on social media, writing, “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know what ‘wonderful secrets’ our sitting president was talking about here.”
Representative Nydia Velázquez of New York noted how the Journal’s “bombshell report” came as House Republicans moved to block the release of the government’s Epstein files. “We need transparency now. Release the files,” she wrote on X.
Representative Ted Lieu of California noted that the story was published by the Journal, a typically conservative outlet. “The Wall Street Journal article on Trump’s obscene and creepy letter to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is explosive. Rupert Murdoch almost certainly would have been briefed about the WSJ story in advance. And Murdoch let it get published,” he wrote on X.
Per the Journal’s report:
Earlier this week, after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were “made up” by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey.
That sort of echoes what Trump told Fox News a year ago when he seemed to back off the idea of releasing all of the Epstein files, citing “phony stuff” that could “affect people’s lives”:
Campos-Duffy: Would you declassify the Epstein files?
Trump: Yeah, yeah, I would.
Campos-Duffy: All right.
Trump: I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would, or at least—
Campos-Duffy: Do you think that would restore trust — help restore trust.
Trump: Yeah. I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.
This seems to suggest that Trump knew this letter existed. But now he’s implying it’s some kind of new fake, because if it did exist last year his deep-state enemies would have used it against him. Here’s what he posted last night:
If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for “TRUMP” to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!
So did Barack Obama and Joe Biden insert a fake Trump letter into a real Epstein birthday album, but then Merrick Garland, James Comey, or some other (apparently principled) deep-state Trump enemy decided not to leak it because they knew it was bullshit? Or did Biden slip it in himself right before he left the White House, like a sleeper-cell birthday letter?
Also, why would a president of the United States or some spook write such a weird letter that Trump and his allies are now repeatedly pointing out doesn’t sound like him? If you wanted to take down Trump by inserting an incriminating letter into the Epstein files, you probably wouldn’t write some weird imagined dialogue about enigmas …
Among his morning posts on Truth Social:
If there was a “smoking gun” on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the “files” for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!
He’s also fantasizing about his lawsuit:
I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his “pile of garbage” newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!
He might as well get an “in Trump we trust” tattoo at this point:
I won’t be surprised if “Trump doesn’t talk like that” becomes a trending phrase on MAGA social media.
Our 2002 feature by Landon Thomas Jr. on the “International Moneyman of Mystery” was published months before Trump’s purported birthday letter, which references how both of them are “enigmas.” The Wall Street Journal referenced Trump’s comments in the piece as part of their bombshell report. Here are Trump’s comment in full:
Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Read the rest here.
Elie Honig marvels at the attorney general’s clueless ongoing response to the scandal she helped create, and he offers some expert analysis of Trump’s sudden plan to quell the uproar by telling Bondi to release grand-jury testimony from the Epstein case:
Late Thursday night, the president again deployed his human deflector by posting on social media that Bondi should “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.” Bondi responded publicly that she’d be in court the next day. But this exchange was largely performative and is likely to result in the actual release of little, if any, new information.
First, written grand-jury transcripts almost certainly comprise only a minuscule fraction of the entire universe of the Epstein files. In my 14 years of prosecutorial experience, grand-jury transcripts would typically be part of a complete file, of course, but a very small part — well under half of any given file, usually under 10 percent, in terms of sheer volume. Even within the subset of documents relating to witness statements, most witnesses wind up speaking to prosecutors and the FBI outside of the grand jury; those statements would not be included in the attorney general’s request.
Next, there’s the word “pertinent.” Just as Trump carefully mucked things up in his prior instruction by using the word “credible,” “pertinent” is vague and in the eye of the beholder. Pertinent to what? Pertinent as assessed by whom?
Finally, it’s far from certain that a judge will even agree to unseal grand-jury documents. Federal rules provide that grand-jury proceedings are secret and can be released only in certain narrow circumstances: where a defendant needs them to make a motion to dismiss an indictment, for example, or where prosecutors need to provide evidence to other investigative bodies. There’s no listed exception to grand-jury secrecy rules for scenarios where the president is freaking out and there’s a ton of public interest.
This is the same dance, repeated.
Read the rest here.
Charlotte Klein reports on the shock many members of the media felt amid the furious response to Trump’s handling of the Epstein files:
[T]he blowback on the right has spiraled into one of the biggest crises in Donald Trump’s second term so far, pitting die-hard conspiracy theorists against a president who vowed to release the “Epstein Files” — catching a lot of journalists by surprise.
“No doubt for mainstream-media readers, the Epstein rift came out of nowhere,” said a New York Times reporter. “We had not established how important this story was to a good chunk of the MAGA base.” A political reporter at a rival publication added, “Prior to the memo’s release, we underreported the amount of right-wing anger at Bondi, and after the memo’s release, we were slow to continue to report on the right wing’s mounting anger at this.”
With hundreds of journalists obsessing over every word Trump utters, it seems hard to believe that so many of them could miss a crisis that, with 20/20 hindsight, was coming a mile away. It underscores how atomized the news environment has become, resulting in audiences and journalists living in entirely different political realities. But in the case of Epstein, it also shows that there may be more overlap between right-wing fever-swamp media and mainstream media than most journalists would like to admit.
Read the rest here.
So far, a lot of MAGA big shots are attacking the report and dismissing the letter’s authenticity.
Not surprisingly, Vice-President J.D. Vance was quick to defend Trump and attack the Journal, writing in a Thursday night X post, “Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it.”
“Where is this letter?” Vance added. “Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?”
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk agreed. “This is not how Trump talks at all,” he said on X. “I don’t believe it.”
“Trump doesn’t talk like this at all,” Jack Posobiec responded. “And this was several years before Epstein was originally arrested.”
Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly called the Journal report the “dumbest attempted hit piece I’ve ever read.”
Even extremist MAGA gadfly Laura Loomer said she isn’t buying it:
I’m calling bullshit on this Trump “birthday letter” to Epstein. It’s totally fake. Everyone who actually KNOWS President Trump knows he doesn’t type letters. He writes notes in big black Sharpie. Trust me, I would know. He doesn’t use email and he doesn’t type write. He writes messages in big black Sharpie.
The Justice Department didn’t respond to The Wall Street Journal’s questions regarding that. DoJ officials apparently went through the album years ago, but it’s not clear if Trump’s Justice Department did too.
The Journal said it had “reviewed” the letter but did not publish an image of it. It’s not clear if the newspaper or someone else eventually will.
In his denial to the Journal, the Sharpie-loving president said that “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women.” Then in a subsequent Truth Social post, he claimed, “I don’t draw pictures.”
Trump is certainly no Jon McNaughton and may not consider himself someone who draws, but he is at the very least a doodler. Trump signed sketches of the Manhattan skyline (all featuring oversize Trump Towers) and one of the Empire State Building have sold at auction for tens of thousands of dollars. A 2020 auction offered a signed copy of Trump: How to Get Rich with his signature and a skyline sketch drawn on the title page. In 2019, Heritage Auctions listed one 2004 sketch, rendered in gold Sharpie, in which he drew little stick figures and simple cars below the buildings:
Three more doodles were sold in 2017: Heritage Auctions sold a similar Trump sketch, only with multiple marker colors and trees; an even more basic Trump skyline sketch sold for nearly $30,000; and a 1995 Empire State Building doodle Trump once offered at a charity auction at Mar-a-Lago was resold for $16,000 — with part of the proceeds going to an NPR station in Connecticut. In his 2010 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success, he even called drawing a “new talent”:
Sometimes being a giver will open you up to new talents. Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green. It takes me a few minutes to draw something.
And more drawings continue to emerge:
The purported Epstein letter isn’t even Trump’s first drawing-related scandal. Who can forget Trump’s Sharpie-doctored NHS map of Hurricane Dorian in 2019?
If there is a simple lesson in all of this, it’s to never make obviously false claims while attempting to deny you drew a naked woman on an old weird birthday letter to the world’s most infamous sex trafficker when countless people on the internet believe you may have directed your Justice Department not to make that letter public.
During a high-profile initial fallout with the president in June after he left the administration, Elon Musk said in a now-deleted X post:
Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!
Soon after, he added:
Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.
Over the past week, the conspiracy-minded billionaire has been repeatedly promoting the idea that the White House perpetrated a cover-up of the so-called Epstein files. On Wednesday he wrote that “it won’t work this time”:
But on Thursday night, Musk also expressed doubt about the Trump letter:
Here’s what he told the Journal in an interview:
“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.
He also repeated his denials and threats on Truth Social:
The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. 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. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT
In another post/statement, Trump went into even more detail about his interactions with, and threats to, the Journal and Murdoch:
The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued. Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so. The Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway. President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly. The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist. President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. It has truly turned out to be a “Disgusting and Filthy Rag” and, writing defamatory lies like this, shows their desperation to remain relevant. If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for “TRUMP” to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!
And Trump posted that he has directed Pam Bondi to release “pertinent” grand-jury testimony from the Epstein case, while also suggesting Democrats had created the birthday letter:
Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!
If you’re just catching up, here’s what The Wall Street Journal reported about the “letter bearing Trump’s name” to Epstein, which was included, along with many other letters and notes from people who knew Epstein, in an album which Ghislaine Maxwell gave him as a 50th-birthday gift:
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair. …
It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
