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President Donald Trump did something Tuesday that he almost never does: He no-commented.
Asked about the newly released image of a lewd birthday letter signed in Trump’s name for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 – a letter Trump denied was legitimate – the president said he’s done talking about it.
“I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue,” Trump told NBC News in a brief phone interview. “I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.”
He might be done talking about this issue. But that doesn’t mean this issue is done with him.
And that’s in large part Trump’s own doing. Over and over again, he and his administration have prolonged the controversy by saying things that don’t add up, reversing themselves and otherwise seeding legitimate questions about their handling of the matter.
It almost looks at times like they’ve been trying to keep it going.
Below are some of the most curious facets of the administration’s response, and the questions they engender.
It would be difficult to prove with absolute certainty that Trump wrote the birthday letter. But what we do know is his denials haven’t added up.
The Wall Steet Journal first reported in July on the birthday letter, which features a strange imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein typed inside the outline of a female body.
Immediately after the story published, Trump said, “I never wrote a picture in my life” and “I don’t draw pictures.” Except he clearly did draw pictures around the period in question. He said later that month that “somebody could have written a letter and used my name.”
But then his lawsuit against the Journal’s parent company claimed the letter didn’t even exist, calling it the “nonexistent letter.” We now know the letter not only existed, but it was in Epstein’s estate. That would sure suggest this wasn’t just a fake created recently to make Trump look bad; it was something that had been in Epstein’s possession.
And finally, shortly after the image of the letter was released Monday, the White House claimed the signature was so different from Trump’s that it was obviously not his. Except it closely matched his signatures on personal letters from the same time period.
Trump doesn’t face any accusations of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. But he’s repeatedly made false claims about the convicted sex offender and his relationship with him that make it increasingly hard to take his strained denials about the letter seriously.
It has been 40 days since we learned Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to a minimum-security prison camp.
That was stunning for a couple reasons. One is that the news dropped around the time she granted an interview to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (one of the administration’s early efforts to quell the backlash over its reversal on releasing all the Epstein files). The other is that, as a sex offender, she didn’t appear eligible for such a transfer, unless someone granted her a waiver.
But despite releasing transcripts from that interview, the administration still hasn’t explained how and why the transfer happened. The White House said in July that Trump wasn’t considering clemency for Maxwell, but Trump for weeks repeatedly left the door open to it.
Appearing on CNN on Monday night, an attorney who has represented Maxwell, Arthur Aidala, didn’t exactly downplay the idea that Maxwell got a concession for talking to Blanche.
“Anybody who’s represented by a lawyer who knows what they’re doing, goes in and meets with the government, there’s always a quid pro quo,” Aidala told CNN’s Abby Phillip.
Aidala said he didn’t know the details of how the transfer went down and didn’t organize the meeting. But he said getting “a benefit” is part of the process.
That doesn’t put the issue to bed. But if this prison transfer was innocent and not connected to Maxwell’s interview with Blanche, why hasn’t the administration explained that?
The name of the game in crisis communications is generally to get anything potentially bad out as soon as possible.
That is decidedly not the approach Trump took to Virginia Giuffre.
Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, is perhaps Epstein’s most well-known victim. She’s also the most significant nexus between Epstein’s victims and Trump. That’s because she testified that Maxwell recruited her while she worked as a minor at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump ultimately acknowledged last month that he was aware in real time that Maxwell had recruited Giuffre from his property; he even suggested it was a source of his and Epstein’s falling out decades ago.
But that admission didn’t come before he spent days – years, really – falling short of full disclosure.
Asked in 2019 about why he and Epstein had a falling out, Trump said, “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”
By July, the White House was tracing their falling out to Epstein being a “creep,” without saying precisely how so.
On July 28, Trump cited how Epstein had “hired help” and “stole people that work for me,” but without going into detail about who.
That led to speculation that he was talking about Giuffre, given her account matched Trump’s description. And sure enough, the next day, Trump acknowledged the employees were young women who worked in the spa – and that Giuffre was one of them.
Even in acknowledging that, Trump seemed reluctant to completely admit it.
“I don’t know,” he said at first when asked if he had been referring to Giuffre. “I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her.”
It’s not hard to surmise why the president might not have wanted to admit knowing about Maxwell recruiting Giuffre at the time. It might suggest he knew something untoward was happening, especially given other evidence he was aware of Epstein’s affinity for young women.
Giuffre’s family said Trump’s comments raised questions about whether he was “aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions.”
The administration still hasn’t done a good job explaining precisely why it suddenly reversed course on releasing the Epstein files.
Trump and his allies built this up as a major initiative and promised full transparency, right before the Justice Department said in early July that it wouldn’t release anything further.
The stated reason was that the administration wanted to protect victims and innocent people whose names might be in the files. But it shouldn’t have been any secret that the files would contain information on victims and the innocent.
And perhaps the most conspicuous aspect of that reversal is the timeline.
In fact, the administration began downplaying the Epstein files right around the time Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump his name was in the files, in May. (You can see the whole timeline here.)
Trump was told that sometime in May, and on May 18, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino went on Fox News and suddenly disowned conspiracy theories about Epstein they had both once promoted. They said Epstein had indeed died by suicide.
There’s also the fact that Trump initially denied having been told his name was in the files – another example of his denials later being contradicted.
All of which has contributed to some Epstein victims and allies suggesting there’s a cover-up afoot.
Many Americans seem to agree that there is. And to the extent they do, Trump and his team have themselves to blame.