Maggie Haberman vs Karoline Leavitt On Trump Epstein Letter
By: Tommy Christopher (Mediaite)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman confronted Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about President Donald Trump's amid the new bombshell revelations of a letter to deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
The now-infamous "Birthday Book" note that Trump sued the Wall Street Journal over was released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Trump had previously denied writing the note, and the White House continues to do so by claiming the signature is not his.
At Tuesday's White House press briefing, Haberman confronted Leavitt over the denial, repeatedly asking her to explain "what's the theory" behind the forgery claim:
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Karoline, thank you. I want to follow up on something you said. You said the Epstein documents are a hoax that Democrats are perpetrating against the president.
You've said he didn't sign the check, that he didn't sign the birthday card that he allegedly signed.
So what is the theory, since these documents came from the Epstein estate? Who is, I guess in your view, faking these documents?
KAROLINE LEAVITT: I did not say the documents are a hoax, I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on television is a hoax that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats like Ro Khanna and the others whom you saw on that press conference outside of Capitol Hill who are trying to push this against the President of the United States.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: Is the hoax. I'm just trying to understand what's fake, what's fake is not the documents, then?
KAROLINE LEAVITT: The hoax is the Democrats pretending to care about victims of crime when they do not care about victims of crime, when they have done nothing to solve crime, when they have nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapists across the country.
And when they are now using victims as political props to try and, again, smear the President of the United States and drag on this bad story about him. It is a distraction.
The Democrats view this story as nothing more than an attempt to distract from the accomplishments and the achievements of this administration. And that is what we mean when we call it a hoax.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: If you said he didn't sign the birthday card, he didn't do this, he also didn't do the check. Those were in documents from the estate, so what is the working theory as to why he's in them?
KAROLINE LEAVITT: The President has one of the most famous signatures in the world, and he has for many, many years.
You know that, Maggie, you've covered him for a long time, long before he assumed this office, when he was a businessman in New York.
The President did not write that letter. He did not sign those documents. He maintains that position, and that position will be argued in court by his lawyers. The President is very confident he is going to win this case.
Leavitt will say anything to try and defend her father figure. Haberman very specifically asks her what is the hoax when the letter was turned over by the Epstein estate. Leavitt says Trump has one of the most famous signatures in the world , as if to suggest it would be easy to forge.
The letter in question is from 2003, long before anyone thought there was something fishy about Epstein and Trump in the same sentence. What would be the motive for someone other than Trump to have concocted this letter? Leavitt has no clue.
www.mediaite.com /opinion/new-trump-epstein-birthday-book-bombshell-is-deadly-and-trump-knows-it/
New Trump-Epstein ‘Birthday Book’ Bombshell Is Deadly — and Trump Knows It
Tommy Christopher 5-6 minutes 9/9/2025
President Donald Trump’s latest Jeffrey Epstein bombshell is deadlier than most of the controversies he has weathered, and his actions show he’s keenly aware of this.
It has been almost two months since Trump flipped out and sued the Wall Street Journal after it dropped a hotly anticipated profile of the Trump-Epstein relationship that included a highly suggestive note — a cryptic 2003 birthday message framed by a crude doodle of a naked woman with a bushy signature where the pubic hair would be — the existence of which Trump’s attorneys have vehemently denied.
Trump reacted with a flurry of denials, telling WSJ , “I never wrote a picture in my life,” referring to a practice that most people describe as “drawing a picture.”
But it wasn’t long before Trump dropped an absurd excuse that implicitly acknowledged the letter’s existence, telling reporters that it could have been forged, perhaps by someone in the Biden administration.
That note was released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. It was part of a trove of materials provided by the Epstein estate. It read exactly as the WSJ report described:
The coping mechanisms from pro-Trump Republicans have been comical, and have included the “Trump isn’t much of an artist” talking point that looks even more comical now that we can all see the drawing. The doodle is drawn with all the skill of a chimpanzee with an Etch-a-Sketch.
House Oversight Committee
Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich each issued quasi-denials. Leavitt wrote on X/Twitter, “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
“ Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote.
But Trump, who has spent months calling the letter a fake, conspicuously failed to repeat his denials when asked about the new release. He told NBC News , “I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.”
Here’s the thing, though — none of the White House responses have included a statement attributed to Trump. It’s just them asserting the signature isn’t real.
That’s an absurd claim on its face, as many others have pointed out. The signature is a close match to other documented examples from the same time period, including a book inscription that reads “TO JEFF — YOU’RE THE GREATEST!”
But it also requires the belief that someone forged Trump’s signature in 2003 and snuck it in with the rest of the creepy birthday cards to embarrass Trump 22 years later.
Trump knows he cannot make that forgery excuse stick, so he has made the decision to shoot himself out of the conversation and let his surrogates argue against reality on his behalf.
The release of the actual letter also reveals, in retrospect, just how damaging this revelation is. It shows that when the story was first released, Trump had to know that the letter was real and placed a $10 billion bet that no one would be able to produce it. He felt it was damaging enough to go to DEFCON One to create whatever doubt he was able to.
Epstein Summer has refocused attention on Trump’s history with women as a flood of unearthed recordings and quotes are given new life and significance, while critics try to paint the president as a longtime sex creep.
All of these queasy moments look even worse in the harsh light of Epstein Summer, in particular, the ones involving underage girls .
But there is a sinister secret handshake quality to this letter that pushes it over the dam beyond what many people have decided they can swallow when it comes to Trump.
There will always be a sizable number of Americans who will stick with Trump no matter what. For them, the absurdity and audacity of a lie is a feature, not a bug.
Close on the people who made him president, though, and they aren’t the people who protect him from accountability.
There is a big chunk of “normies” who voted for Trump despite the creepy stuff because they felt he made up for it in other ways, and there is another chunk of people who occupy positions of power who protects Trump because it is beneficial for their political aims.
It is these two groups with which he is most vulnerable, and Trump can’t afford to have them believing he was in the Jeffrey Epstein secret massage club.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
In my opinion the facts are going to show that Trump knew Epstein was coercing 14 and 15 year olds into sex.
The question then will be how much do Americans care ?
Not that I'm defending Dump but if he would've just admitted he did this tongue-in-cheek, naughty birthday card and that yes, he was a "frat-friend" of Epi and they ran the roos, and flipped-flopped & served whores like flap-jacks this crap would've been a one and done dead story. I mean, one can even say his signature is positioned in a pubic-like manner.
The problem is this is one of the things he ran one, as most of us have stated ad nauseum, and now that he is denying this, it's makes him look Epi-guilty. And let's face it, he doesn't have the most capable people lying, I mean, backing him up on it. And him moving Ghissy to a cushy "prison place" for her pathetic lies does not help his case. You can see through her BS like a chiffon dress in the rain.
Laying this at the feet of the Biden administration is straight lame, even for him and his blonde bomb-shelter Leavitt.
Good. I'm glad someone else caught that
On Nicole Wallace's show today she had a guest who said the birthday book messages indicate that some of Epstein's friends knew or suspected that he was having sex with underage girls. This could be big.
image from the birthday book
Epstein’s birthday book reveals the depravity his ‘friends’ laughed off
Innuendo-laden messages, photos, and drawings in 238-page album raise awkward questions about who knew what, and when