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Welcome to Popular Information, a newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism.
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On July 17, the Wall Street Journal published an explosive report regarding President Trump's relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. According to the report, during the course of the federal investigation into Epstein, the Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained a racy birthday note that Trump sent Epstein in 2003.
The note, the Wall Street Journal reported, features a line drawing of a naked woman with Trump's signature representing pubic hair. Inside the drawing is an imaginary dialogue between Trump and Epstein that concludes with Trump saying, "[M]ay every day be another wonderful secret."
Trump promptly sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion, alleging the article was "false and defamatory." In the lawsuit, Trump's attorneys assert that "the letter was fake and nonexistent." According to the lawsuit, two reporters from the Wall Street Journal "concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light."
Two days before the article was published, Trump suggested that if there was anything damaging about him in the DOJ's Epstein files, it was planted there by Democrats. "These files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden," Trump told reporters on July 15.
Then, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to Epstein's estate, requesting documents. On September 8, the Committee publicly released some of that material, including a copy of a 238-page birthday book prepared for Epstein in 2003. On page 165 was a letter from Trump to Epstein that precisely matched the letter described in Wall Street Journal report:
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This created two problems for Trump. First, a letter did exist. Second, the letter could not have been created by the Biden or Obama administrations, as it was obtained directly from Epstein's estate, not the DOJ.
Neither Trump nor the White House has directly addressed either of those issues. On Tuesday evening, Trump unveiled a new defense: "It's not my signature."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that "the Daily Signal…published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said that this absolutely was not the president's authentic signature." The Daily Signal did not publish any such article.
The Daily Wire, a different conservative site, published an article claiming to have done "3 forensic analyses" of the letter. The outlet actually conducted no "forensic analyses" or consulted with any "signature analysts." Instead, the Daily Wire simply plugged the letter into three AI models, which concluded the language did not match Trump's writing style.
The AI models came to the conclusion by falsely claiming that words like "enigma" were absent from Trump's "authentic corpus." As Popular Information previously reported, Trump has repeatedly used the word "enigma" and other distinctive terms in the letter.
Comparisons with other known signatures from Trump at the time are very similar.
Thomas W. Vastrick, president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, told the Washington Post that the signature on the alleged letter to Epstein is "very consistent in letter design, slant, and letter height ratios."
According to Vastrick, for "someone to say it’s not his handwriting or doesn’t look like his handwriting, I don’t know where they’re coming from." Vastrick said he could not make a formal determination, however, because he was not able to review the original document. Therefore, he could not tell whether the signature was "cut and paste or original."