MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire dumped cold water on the "hoax" denials of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal coming from President Donald Trump and his allies.
Trump had denied writing a suggestive birthday note decades ago to the late sex offender, and now that House Oversight Committee Democrats have obtained a copy, the president's allies are insisting his signature was forged as part of a years-long political hit campaign.
"There were real hopes in the White House that over the August recess that this story would fade away, that we would talk about other things, and we did for a time, the story lost some heat," Lemire told "Morning Joe."
"But it's come back now, and we shouldn't overlook the fact that some of the women involved here, the victims, you had that very powerful news conference a few days ago and put a real human face to this. It's not just a political story, it's a human tragedy. It's a crime, and yesterday you saw what is the familiar playbook, just an attempt to deny reality, to say, 'No, no, no, it's a lie, it's a hoax, it's a witch hunt,' whatever it is, without actually offering any evidence to support those claims, and the Wall Street Journal, let's remember, the president sued the Journal. Members of his administration attacked the Journal, basically daring them, like, show us the evidence here.
"Well, they did, but let's remember, this isn't something they conjured up."
"This was in the Epstein estate since 2003," Lemire added. "That'd be quite the long game to try to get President Trump. If this was indeed a hoax to plant a birthday card more than two decades ago, and the Journal did a very good job, one of the lines of defense was the White House said, 'Well, the president always signs first name, first and last name.' Well, that's not the case. They presented a number of letters where sometimes it's just 'Donald,' so the signature certainly would appear to match that photograph you just showed with the fake check. Certainly would raise some eyebrows, and, again, this is a story that even some Republicans are not willing to let go."
Host Joe Scarborough reminded viewers that conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch was helping to drive the scandal with fresh reporting in the Journal, his flagship newspaper.
"It is now, again, safely the most conservative, the most powerful conservative media organization on the planet," Scarborough said. "They are the ones who have broken this story, they are the ones who have continued reporting on this story. 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, whatever they would want to say. This is straight out of the Murdoch empire – all of it."
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