US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. New revelations complicate Trump’s denials about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender. Photo / Anna Rose Layden, The New York Times
Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has proved himself adept at evading the controversies that have dogged him on an almost daily basis.
With the vast powers of the presidency at his disposal, he often succeeds in pivoting the national conversation to focus on political terrain he finds more favourable, like immigration or crime.
But for weeks now, there has been one controversy the President has been unable to evade: the public clamour over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender.
Now, with the release this week of new information from Epstein’s estate, including a suggestive note apparently signed by Trump, the drip-drip-drip of revelations is complicating the White House strategy of brushing off the entire controversy.
The President’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was yesterday once again confronted with questions about the so-called Epstein files, a collection of documents from the law enforcement investigation into Epstein’s abuse of girls and women.
The White House has denied for weeks that Trump sent a bawdy birthday note to Epstein in 2003, the subject of an earlier Wall Street Journal report. But on Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee obtained the document and released it.
Suddenly, there it was, out in the open for all to see. The drawing of a naked woman. The strange reference to a “secret” shared between Trump and Epstein.
In response, Leavitt at first deflected. She accused Democrats of opportunistically clamouring to release the Epstein documents while Trump was President, something they did not make a major push for during the Biden presidency.
“Why are the Democrats all of a sudden caring about this? It’s because they are desperately trying to concoct a hoax to smear the President of the United States,” Leavitt said.
Then she shifted to denial.
Leavitt again denied that Trump had written the note in question. She said the White House would even support a professional handwriting analyst’s evaluation of the signature, which she said would vindicate the President.
The signature on the note closely matches the first-name-only version of the way the President signed his name in letters to New York City officials at the time.
Leavitt was then asked about another item in the documents: an oversize cheque that purports to be a joking payment of US$22,500 from Trump to Epstein, to buy a “fully depreciated” woman.
Leavitt again denied Trump’s involvement, saying he “absolutely” had not signed the cheque in question.
Even as Leavitt called the situation a “hoax” and claimed Trump had no role in the documents released, she said she had never claimed they were fake.
The documents were subpoenaed from the Epstein estate. Under questioning from reporters, Leavitt said she “did not say the documents are a hoax”. Instead, she suggested that someone must have forged Trump’s signature.
“The President has one of the most famous signatures in the world, and he has for many, many years,” she said.
It was clear she was following the lead of her boss.
Throughout July, Trump repeatedly attempted to instruct the media and fellow Republicans to move on from the Epstein files. In a post on Truth Social, he urged the GOP to “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”.
But the clamour for the files persisted, and the President repeatedly referred to the controversy as a “hoax,” angering Epstein’s victims.
After the Journal reported on the Epstein birthday note, Trump filed a lawsuit accusing the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, of defaming him.
“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. (Trump has long drawn pictures and even sold them at auction.)
He repeated his denial yesterday, saying that “anybody that’s covered me for a long time knows that’s not my language. It’s nonsense.”
Democrats have seized on the controversy. But more concerning for Trump, he has not been able to convince all Republicans to back off an effort to release the files.
Four Republicans – Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina – have joined with Democrats to support what is called a discharge petition to force the release of the files.
Still, Republicans have mostly fought the effort, and GOP leaders in Congress have largely sided with Trump’s insistence that he played no role in the bawdy birthday note to Epstein.
“I’m told that it’s fake,” Speaker Mike Johnson said of the note.
Representative James Comer, R-Kentucky, who leads the Oversight Committee, said that he accepted Trump’s denial about the note.
“The President says he did not sign it, so I take the President at his word,” Comer said.
He added that he was not inclined to investigate the signature’s authenticity, even as Comer is leading an investigation into the legitimacy of former President Joe Biden’s signature on documents that were signed with an autopen.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Luke Broadwater
Photographs by: Anna Rose Layden, Tierney L. Cross, Doug Mills
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