MAGA Finally Gets Some New Epstein Files. They’re Not Happy
The president's supporters are absurdly trying to claim that a newly released letter he sent the convicted sex offender is fake
Right-wing media outlets have long demanded information about Jeffrey Epstein. They were briefly outraged when Donald Trump’s Justice Department announced in July that it would no longer release any documents related to the case, before largely closing it and backing the president, even though his name repeatedly appeared in the “Epstein dossier.”
The Wall Street Journal, which published a story in July about a controversial birthday letter Trump sent to Epstein in the early 2000s, revealed Monday that Congress had obtained the letter from Epstein’s estate and released a copy. This is an interesting development, given that Trump and his supporters vehemently denied the letter’s existence earlier this summer, and Trump even filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the newspaper over the story.
Well, the letter exists, as do a multitude of other documents provided by Epstein’s estate to Congress, some of which shed light on the president’s bizarre relationship with the convicted sex offender. You’d think all the conservatives who claimed to be so concerned about sex trafficking would welcome the release of this information. However, they’re more concerned about protecting the president, and so they’re going to great lengths to pretend that Trump’s letter to Epstein is a fake or that the signature on the note—which is clearly Trump’s—is not his.
White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt wrote on X: “The latest Wall Street Journal story proves the entire ‘Christmas card’ story false. As I’ve said all along, it couldn’t be clearer that President Trump did not draw this picture, nor did he sign it.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, who had called the Wall Street Journal’s initial report “total nonsense,” continued to call it “nonsense” after the letter’s publication, writing on X that “Democrats don’t care” about Epstein and his victims. (Trump has, of course, repeatedly called the Epstein case a “hoax” because his Justice Department is not communicating with Epstein’s victims, but with the sex offender’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker.)
The Democrats don't care about Epstein. They don’t even care about his victims. That's why they were silent about it for years. The only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies.
No one is falling for this BS. https://t.co/u3pHgBtQDf— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 8, 2025
James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which obtained the documents, said he took the president at his word when he said the purported presidential signature was a forgery. House Speaker Mike Johnson did the same, deferring to the White House. The president, for his part, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday that the letter was “a dead letter.”
Several MAGA influencers responsibly relayed the information, claiming on X that the signature at the bottom of the Christmas letter did not match Trump’s. Charlie Kirk asked on X, “Does the signature below, taken from the Wall Street Journal, look like the president’s actual signature?” Kirk replied, “I don’t think so at all. It’s a fake.” Bennie Johnson questioned whether the letter was “the best they could do,” adding that “Trump has the most famous signature in the world” and that “it’s time to sue them until they’re erased.”
Both Kirk and Johnson included versions of Trump’s signature, different from his own, in the letter, but his signature has evolved considerably over the years. For example, the two “real” versions shared by Kirk and Johnson are not identical, except for the black Sharpie pen with heart-shaped ink, which Trump is known to use for his signatures, including those in the Epstein letter.
The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others have compared Trump’s signature in the letter to other signatures from roughly the same period, and even more than a decade earlier. The signatures were nearly identical, with Trump’s signature in the 2003 letter matching those in various letters and documents dated 1987, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2006.
Of course, no amount of evidence can dissuade the White House, congressional Republicans, and online commentators in the “MAGA” movement from declaring Trump innocent of any wrongdoing. They have learned, so far, from the president that if they deny the truth fervently enough and for long enough, the media—and therefore the public—will eventually bend to their will.
This is already happening with Epstein. CNN’s John Berman attempted Tuesday morning to refute the hypothesis of Trump’s possible involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities, notably by pointing out that Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker and perjurer whom House Speaker Johnson has said he does not believe—recently told the Justice Department that Trump was a “gentleman” and that she had never heard of him engaging in inappropriate behavior with masseuses.
Berman said: “Take this literally, but Ghislaine Maxwell has said she never saw Donald Trump, or anyone else, commit any wrongdoing related to Epstein.”
