A lawyer for President Donald Trump argued Monday that a bawdy letter President Donald Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein – that was later released by a Republican-controlled House committee – could not be proven to be the same one described in a report from The Wall Street Journal, making it an “improper” exhibit in court.
The lawyer, Alejandro Brito, made the argument via a court filing late on Monday in the case regarding Trump’s lawsuit against the Journal for its July report on the letter, which Trump has denied writing. The House Oversight Committee – which has a Republican majority and is chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) – released additional files on Epstein in September, which included the letter, a birthday message written atop a crude sketch of a naked woman’s torso.
In the filing, however, Brito called into question the legitimacy of the House committee’s release, arguing that it would be unfair to assume for the court’s purposes that its release of the letter and the letter as reported by the Journal were one and the same.
“Whether [the letter]... is the same drawing allegedly heard about, seen, imagined or otherwise conjured up by a reporter prior to the publication of the [Journal] article that is the subject of this action is a classic factual dispute – and one that must be resolved through discovery, not presumption,” Brito wrote.
Critically, no witness, author, or official custodian identifies [the letter] as originating from, or corresponding to, the article. The article itself does not state that defendants obtained the letter from a congressional source, nor does the congressional record state that its attachment was relied upon, quoted, or reviewed by that reporter. There is no attribution, no chain of custody, and no cross-reference tying the two documents together.”
The Journal has stood by its reporting, and legal experts have argued that Trump’s lawsuit “stands a really poor chance in court” given that the president’s legal team would not only have to prove that the letter is fake, but that it was reported on by the Journal with actual malice or gross negligence.
“The thing is with Trump though, the legal standards don't seem to matter to him and his legal team very much,” said former prosecutor Shanlon Wu back in July. “As a legal matter? Ridiculous lawsuit, should get dismissed right away.”
Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and was well known for his close ties with powerful figures, including former President Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and Trump, who flew on Epstein’s private jet several times in the 1990s and was called the pedophile's “closest friend for 10 years” in 2017.