Trump live updates: White House supports forensic analysis of Donald signature on ‘bawdy’ birthday letter to Epstein

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.”

President Donald Trump continued to deny he signed a birthday letter to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a rare restaurant outing in Washington, D.C., Tuesday night, while protesters called him “the Hitler of our time.”

The protesters were carrying Palestinian flags and also chanted “Free D.C.” and “Free Palestine,” per NBC News.

Trump said outside Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab he was going out to eat to highlight D.C. is a safer city since his federal takeover of local police and deployment of the National Guard.

A trove of documents from the investigation into late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was released Monday by a congressional committee.

The bombshell document drop included a 238-page book compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, with dozens of contributions from the disgraced financier’s rich and powerful friends, along with “girl-friends.” Among the biggest revelations was a sexually suggestive hand-drawn naked woman and cryptic message, allegedly by President Donald Trump. Epstein’s last will and testament, and lengthy address book were also released.

The documents were made public by the House Oversight Committee, after it subpoenaed Epstein’s estate last month, amid ongoing outcry over the Trump administration’s failure to keep a promise made by the president and release all the files related to the case.

Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving abuse of girls as young as 14. Epstein was previously arrested and charged with soliciting prostitution in Florida in 2006. The charge sparked a federal investigation, but Epstein struck a plea deal that protected him from further charges. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to state charges and registered as a sex offender.

Read more from Katie Hawkinson:

President Donald Trump said on the streets of Washington, D.C. Tuesday night, he’ll announce the next city he’s targeting for his crime crackdown ”probably tomorrow.”