President Donald Trump's lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for the reporting about his bawdy birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein will be almost impossible to win now that the alleged image has been produced by House Oversight Committee Democrats, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday.
Trump has repeatedly denied the existence of the letter, which includes a poem wishing Epstein that every day be a "wonderful secret," and is outlined by a crude doodle of a naked woman. Now, the White House is claiming that the signature on the newly produced letter isn't Trump's — but Honig doubts that will work.
"Elie, I don't know, the signature looks pretty close to Donald Trump's signature, if not exactly like Donald Trump's signature," said anchor Jake Tapper. "Maybe not the ones in the ones in the pictures that Taylor Budowich tweeted out. But here's one from, [a letter] President Trump did ... in 2015. I mean, it's pretty identical. Is this going to make Trump's defamation case against News Corp more difficult?"
"It's going to be way more difficult, Jake, now," confirmed Honig.
"If you look at Donald Trump's actual complaint here, his lawsuit, he alleges, first that the letter is, and I quote, 'nonexistent,'" said Honig. "Well, now we know that that's off the table. The letter certainly does exist. And now Trump's going to have to make a fallback argument that we're hearing that, well, maybe this is not his signature. But again, if you look back at The Wall Street Journal, they hedged on that. The original article by The Wall Street Journal does not say definitively this is his signature. In fact, the article actually says the circumstances around the creation of the letter are unclear.
"So Trump has to prove that A) the reporting was false, and that B) it was knowingly or recklessly false. And I think this was a long shot to begin with. And I think the appearance of this letter has made it even longer of a shot."
Watch the video below or at the link here.