House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday shot down the Wall Street Journal’s salacious hit piece on an alleged bawdy birthday letter written by President Trump’s to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein over 20 years ago.
Johnson said he spoke with the president this morning “about the latest ridiculous smear.”
The story goes that for Epstein’s 50th birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 assembled an album containing well wishes from a number of his family and friends, including allegedly Trump.
Trump’s letter, according to WSJ reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, allegedly “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”
The story landed with a thud on X, where numerous conservative pundits immediately shot it down as it as obviously “fake.”
“Between the Coldplay thing, Colbert getting canceled, and the WSJ lighting its entire paper on fire over a fake cartoon, it has been a pretty hilarious day on this site,” wrote the Federalist’s Sean Davis.
“The media’s Trump-Epstein “BOMBSHELL” gives me Brett Kavanaugh yearbook vibes… That’s it?” quipped CNN’s resident Republican Scott Jennings. “This is exactly the kind of fake news smear campaign that makes Trump’s base rally around him. Be careful what you ask for, Dems!”
“The WSJ wants us to believe Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray sat on this for 4 years,” posted author John John Lefevre. “RIP The Wall Street Journal.”
Speaker Johnson told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that he spoke with the president about “that ridiculous allegation” this morning and that Trump was extremely frustrated about it.
“He said it’s patently absurd,” Johnson said, adding that Trump said “He’s never drawn such a picture. He’s never thought of drawing such a picture. And he said, ‘did you see the language of this bogus supposed communication or card or something I supposedly sent to Epstein?’ He said, ‘I don’t talk like that, I don’t think like that.’”
Johnson accused the WSJ of “literally making things up” and said Trump is “so frustrated by it” because he had told the reporters the story “was totally contrived.”
“He’s going wind up I think suing some of the media outlets who put this out there,” the Speaker told Kernen.
On Truth Social Thursday night, Trump announced that he would be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Rupert Murdoch for publishing what he called “a false, malicious, and defamatory story.”
The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued. Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so. The Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway. President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly. The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist. President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. It has truly turned out to be a “Disgusting and Filthy Rag” and, writing defamatory lies like this, shows their desperation to remain relevant. If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for “TRUMP” to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!
One of the authors of the hit piece, Joe Palazzolo, has a connection to Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, RealClearPolitics reporter Susan Crabtree pointed out on X, Friday.
Before joining the WSJ, Palazzolo wrote for Main Justice, a publication focused on news about the U.S. Department of Justice, which was founded by Simpson’s wife’ Mary Jacoby.
Simpson’s firm Fusion GPS was the Democrat opposition research firm used by the Clinton Campaign and DNC in 2016 to dig up/manufacture dirt on then-candidate Trump. The effort resulted in the now discredited Steele Dossier at the center of the Russia hoax, which notably included the infamous allegations about a salacious “pee tape” involving Trump.
In 2007, Simpson and Jacoby co-wrote a spy-novel-like article titled ‘How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington,’ which featured many of the same names and themes that were used throughout the Russia hoax.
“Both Glenn Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby, worked for the Wall Street Journal before launching their own enterprises,” Crabtree noted. Palazzolo’s work at Jacoby’s Main Justice is the only prior reporting experience listed in his bio.
Meanwhile, Palazzolo’s reporting on the Stormy Daniels scandal was cited by New York Magazine as “helping [to] set in motion the first criminal prosecution of a former president.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued the following statement calling the WSJ’s story a “hatchet job.”
The Wall Street Journal published a hatchet job article with a FAKE “birthday letter” that is supposedly from 2003. This is like the Steele Dossier that kickstarted “the Russia, Russia, Russia” Hoax all over again. The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document they’re basing their ENTIRE fake story on. When has President Trump ever spoken like the conversation alleged in the fake WSJ story? That’s not at all how he speaks or writes. The WSJ knowingly published false information to smear the President of the United States. As I said at the podium today, there is a coordinated Hoax by the Democrats and Fake News to smear President Trump — as we’ve seen throughout both of his terms.
“The president is the most maligned and attacked political figure in the history of American politics, there’s no question about it,” Speaker Johnson said on Squawk Box Friday. “But he’s also the most resilient.”