Just two hours after reporters flagged what appeared to be a 2019 letter from deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to fellow offender Larry Nassar reflecting on how President Donald Trump shared their liking of young girls, the Justice Department put out a statement proclaiming the letter was almost certainly fake, citing among other things that the handwriting does not resemble any known handwriting for Epstein, and that the letter was postmarked to a date just slightly after Epstein was found dead in his cell.
This statement triggered a wave of reactions from commenters on social media. Some noted that the letter in question was actually already flagged by the Associated Press years earlier based on corroborating documents from the Bureau of Prisons.
“That’s not confirming anything, it’s the same stuff you said before plus what an unnamed person says about how the handwriting ‘appears,’” wrote attorney and political commentator Damin Toell.
Many others agreed with the DOJ that the letter was probably a forgery — but still suspected that the DOJ had nefarious intentions in the timing and particulars of how they released that information to the public.
“The White House would like to make it seem impossible to tell what’s credible v. what isn’t credible, and they will happily shape this release to try to discredit responsible journalists trying in good faith to report accurately & evenly about what is included in the docs,” wrote The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger.
“Seems pretty clear to me that the DOJ knowingly released a fake letter from Epstein just to give MAGA influencers a talking point to defend Trump from all the other incriminating shit in these files,” wrote Democratic strategist Mike Nellis.
“Seems like a smooth operation, releasing files after a legally mandated deadline and then vetting them for authenticity on the fly,” wrote Gavin Aronsen of the Iowa Off Kilter podcast.
“What kind of weird shell game is DOJ playing?” wrote media consultant David Clinch. “Drip drip release of files and then investigating files after they are released? Either this is total incompetence, or it is deliberate obfuscation. Either way, it is all illegal since ALL files should have been released on deadline.”
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