Typically full of brio and swagger, the White House is scrambling because Trump is behaving so out of character
It took Trump chronicler Maggie Haberman to cut to the chase: if Trump didn’t sign the birthday card or other documents released by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, the reporter asked in a quiet yet insistent tone, what’s the working theory as to why he’s in there?
“The president has one of the most famous signatures in the world,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, replied on Tuesday. “The president did not write that letter. He did not sign those documents.”
Leavitt will have to do better than that. The typewritten message inserted into the sketched outline of a nude woman looks like compelling evidence of a close – and laddish – relationship between the US president and the world’s most notorious paedophile sex trafficker.
Tuesday’s press briefing at the White House was the latest demonstration of how the Epstein files are the scandal that refuses to die. Leavitt threw Roman candles, Catherine wheels and smoke bombs in the air in the hope of distracting reporters. But she was unable to quash the nagging suspicion that Donald Trump has something to hide.
