CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig says President Donald Trump is “running out of options,” after he sued The Wall Street Journal in July for reporting on his “FAKE” birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
“The Source” host Kaitlan Collins noted Monday that Trump had sued the Journal for billions over its reporting on what he called the “nonexistent” letter — only for House Democrats to share it on social media on Monday.
Collins brought on Honig to assess the future of Trump’s lawsuit in the wake of Monday’s bombshell release.
“Well, Donald Trump’s lead argument just went out the window, Kaitlan,” said Honig.
“Because, you said the key word in the intro to this show, ‘nonexistent,’” he continued. “Twice in the complaint that Donald Trump brought to initiate this lawsuit, he claims the letter is ‘nonexistent.’ Now we know that it is quite existent, so to speak.”
The 2003 letter contained the hand-drawn silhouette of a naked woman and curiously mentioned “enigmas” that “never age.” Trump was once friends with Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, but denied writing the note in July.
His lawsuit accuses Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo of quoting “the nonexistent letter,” and blames the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, of authorizing the article’s publication despite Trump’s claim the letter was “fake and nonexistent.”
“These are not my words, not the way I talk,” Trump wrote on social media in July. “Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”
The Journal had carefully reviewed and reported on the letter at the time, but an actual image of it was only released Monday after the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Epstein’s estate for the original copy — prompting even further White House denials.
“As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X. “President Donald Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
Honig noted that the administration has stopped calling the letter “nonexistent,” citing Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who said earlier on the show that the letter came “from the Epstein estate” directly.
“And now, Donald Trump is falling back to argument B, which is, ‘I didn’t sign it,’” Honig explained. “But you know what? Legally, that actually doesn’t matter.”
“The Wall Street Journal doesn’t say definitively that he signed it,” he later continued. “They’re actually quite lawyerly and hedged, and what they do say is it’s uncertain how this letter came about. So, even that is not going to get Donald Trump anywhere.”
Epstein’s convicted former accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, claimed during her recent prison interview that she doesn’t recall Trump sending a birthday letter for Epstein. Honig said Monday that this would be deemed mere hearsay in court, however, and shared some final thoughts.
“He’s running out of options,” he said about Trump. “I think this lawsuit was a long shot from the start, and it just got quite a bit longer.”