Trump-Epstein live: Trump lays out three reasons why ‘bawdy’ letter in Epstein’s birthday book is ‘nonsense’

The White House said it would support a handwriting expert to review a signature, alleged to belong to Donald Trump, attached to a letter in Jeffrey Epstein’s 2003 birthday book.

“Sure, we would support that,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, after being pressed by a reporter on a professional review of the signature.

Donald Trump issued a three-pronged defense yesterday evening as he went to dine in Washington, D.C., flaunting his federal takeover of police and military presence in the city.

Hours after telling Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book was a “dead issue,” Trump doubled down that the accusations he appeared in the document were “nonsense.”

“It’s not my signature,” he began. “And it’s not the way I speak.”

He continued: “Anybody that’s covered me for a long time know [sic] that’s not my language. It’s nonsense. And frankly, you’re wasting your time.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson maintained his staunch support of President Donald Trump after the House Oversight Committee released a “bawdy” letter to Jeffrey Epstein, allegedly penned by the president.

As he stepped into the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, reporters asked the Louisiana Republican about the card, which includes a signature that looks similar to other times the president autographed letters and notes, in the decades before he was in office.

But Johnson disputed that the signature was Trump’s “Donald” Sharpie scrawl.

“I don’t — and they say it’s not,” Johnson said when asked if he supports the White House denial that Trump authored the note.

Read more from Eric Garcia:

John Bowden writes about the fallout after the House Oversight Committee released a birthday letter President Donald Trump is claimed to have written to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein:

On Monday, the White House’s explanation remained firm. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and other members of the Trump comms team declared that the signature on the letter was a forgery, though it bears an impeccable resemblance to other signatures verifiably made by the president over the years, including during his time in the White House.

“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire “Birthday Card” story is false.

“As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” Leavitt wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday President Donald Trump is “very confident” he will win a defamation lawsuit he brought against The Wall Street Journal.

The lawsuit stems from a July article in which the WSJ reported on the existence of a birthday letter claimed to be authored by Trump and gifted to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump and the White House have vehemently denied the reporting, despite the House Oversight Committee releasing the letter to the public.

Joe Scarborough, co-host of Morning Joe, has pushed back on Republicans who continue to assert that President Donald Trump’s birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein is a “hoax,” reminding them that the initial reporting came from one of Rupert Murdoch’s conservative news organizations.

On Monday, Democrats on the House Ethics Committee released the letter that allegedly contains Trump’s signature and the hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, appearing to confirm a July report fromThe Wall Street Journal.

The White House has maintained its position that the letter is fake and it is not Trump’s real signature. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “Democrat Epstein hoax.”

But on his morning show Tuesday, Scarborough pointed out: “It is Rupert Murdoch’s own conservative media empire that is running this, not Democrats, not a Democratic hoax, not a left-wing CBS News edit or whatever they would want to say.”

Read more from Ariana Baio:

Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, bashed House Speaker Mike Johnson on MSNBC after he said President Donald Trump was an FBI informant in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

“Speaker Johnson gets to cosplay as speaker when Trump lets him do it. When he’s not out there saying Trump’s an FBI informant,” Moskowitz said Tuesday night. “I have lots of questions about that. Like, how long was he an informant? Did he wear the same makeup?”

Johnson has walked back his comment that Trump was an FBI informant.

“More than a decade ago, President Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, and he was one of the only people, one of the only prominent people, as everyone has reported … that he was willing to help law enforcement go after this guy who was a disgusting child abuser, sex trafficker, all the allegations,” he told reporters Monday.

“I don’t know if I used the right terminology, but that’s common knowledge, and everybody knows that,” he added.

The White House also confirmed Trump was not an FBI informant.

Eric Trump ran to the friendly confines of Newsmax Monday night to offer up a laughable defense of the “bawdy” sketch that his father allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein for the convicted sex offender’s 50th birthday.

“I can tell you my father does not sketch out cartoon drawings,” the presidential scion declared, despite the incontrovertible fact that multiple Donald Trump doodles have been sold at auction houses.

The younger Trump’s denial comes as the White House world throws everything against the wall to explain away the publication of the “birthday book” sent to Epstein in 2003, which includes a letter that features an imagined conversation between Epstein and the president framed by a hand-drawn figure of a naked woman. Meanwhile, the president’s alleged trademarked scribbled signature is placed in a location to mimic a woman’s pubic hair.

The president has furiously denied composing the letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in July, calling it a “fake thing” and “nonexistent.” After the WSJ first broke news about the card’s existence, the president filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the paper, its reporters and owner Rupert Murdoch, claiming that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

Read more from Justin Baragona:

Niall Stanage, the White House Columnist for The Hill, has called the Trump administration’s strategy on the fallout from documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “very flimsy.”

“The Jeffrey Epstein saga is causing new problems for President Trump,” Stanage wrote in a piece published Tuesday. “This time, it’s raising questions about the strategy he and his aides have adopted in denying any involvement in a book prepared for the deceased financier and sexual predator’s 50th birthday,” Stanage wrote in a piece published Tuesday.

“The emphatic strategy was risky from the start — and now looks very flimsy, indeed. As a consequence, the president has given fresh impetus to a story that has disquieted even parts of his base. It’s a story Trump is eager to move past — yet he keeps doing things that put that goal further out of reach.”