By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House on Tuesday said it would support a forensic analysis of the signature on a letter purportedly given by Donald Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that Trump’s aides say is not the president’s.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein before becoming president but had a falling out with the former financier years before his death, has denied giving him a letter that appears in a birthday book for Epstein with the sketch of a woman’s body and a note about secrets.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday released the letter, written more than 20 years ago, to the public. The White House quickly denied its authenticity.
Karoline Leavitt, the president’s spokeswoman, told reporters on Tuesday that the White House would back an analysis of the signature to prove Trump right.
“The president did not write this letter. He did not sign this letter,” she said.
The release of the documents has brought renewed attention to an issue that has become a political thorn in the president’s side. Though he has urged his supporters to move on from the topic, appetite for details about Epstein’s crimes and who else may have known about them or been involved with him has remained high.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday found the U.S. public continues to harbor suspicions about the Epstein case, with 65% of respondents saying the government is hiding information about his 2019 death in prison, which was ruled a suicide, and 72% saying the government is hiding information about the accused sex trafficker’s client list. Both figures were up slightly from a similar survey in July.
However, the survey of 1,084 adults found a bright spot for Trump: 44% of Republican respondents said they approved of the way he was handling the Epstein matter, up from 35% in July. Overall, only 17% of the public approved of his handling of the issue.
The survey, conducted between Friday and Tuesday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Leavitt accused Democrats of trying to hurt the president by focusing on the Epstein case.
“Republicans in the Trump Department of Justice have done more in terms of transparency when it comes to the Epstein case than any prior administration,” she said. “And why are the Democrats all of a sudden caring about this? It’s because they are desperately trying to concoct a hoax to smear the president of the United States.”
Four Republicans in the House of Representatives have signed on to a bipartisan petition seeking to force the Trump administration to release all documents on Epstein.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Stephen Coates)
Comments