On the sourcing of that Wall Street Journal article

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ON THE SOURCING OF THAT WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE. About that Wall Street Journal article on the 2003 Jeffrey Epstein birthday letter said to be from Donald Trump: Its sourcing is frustratingly — and intentionally — vague. 

The article says Ghislaine Maxwell “collected” letters from Trump and others for Epstein’s 50th birthday 22 years ago, attributing that to “documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.”

On the most basic questions about the letter — Did the Journal reporters see it? If they did, did they see the original? A photo or copy? — the article says the “letter bearing Trump’s name” was “reviewed by the Journal.” It then describes what “appears to be” a hand drawing of a naked woman and a signature (“a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair”). Saying that the Journal “reviewed” the letter seems to clearly indicate that the reporters saw it. If they didn’t, what they wrote would be misleading.

On the obvious question of why the Journal did not include an image of the letter in its story — the article simply does not address it. The piece would have been infinitely stronger if it included the letter. But it doesn’t.

In perhaps the most important attribution in the story, the authors say that “pages” from a leather-bound album “are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago.” It attributes that to “people who have reviewed the pages.” That could go back many years to both Democratic and Republican administrations. Are the DOJ officials current or former or both? The article doesn’t say, but including the phrase “years ago” and adding that the album was “assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006,” suggests the answer is former officials.

The article also adds that it is “unclear” whether “any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.” In another place, it says that “Justice Department officials didn’t respond to requests for comment or address questions about whether the Trump page and other pages of the birthday album were part of the agency’s recent documents review.” It also notes that the FBI “refused to comment.” That suggests, but does not definitively say, that the information in the article came from people who are not currently in the Trump Justice Department.

The article says that the album had “poems, photos and greetings from businesspeople, academics, Epstein’s former girlfriends and childhood pals,” attributing that to “the documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with them.” 

Finally, it says that “it isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared,” which seems to be a pretty big gap in the story.

The rest of the article is filler.

It’s always risky to try to pinpoint the sources of an article that is both as controversial and as imprecisely sourced as this one. Information can bounce around several places before it ends up in the newspaper. But the Journal would certainly be doing the political world a favor by showing the world the letter and saying more about how this story came to be.

One last thing — and this is critical. Amid all this attention to minutiae, it’s important to recognize that the letter, even if absolutely genuine, doesn’t add anything to our understanding of Trump’s contacts with Epstein before those contacts ended 21 years ago, in 2004. There has been no evidence introduced to suggest that Trump was implicated in any of Epstein’s wrongdoing. On Thursday, the Washington Post‘s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, updated his reporting on all the known contacts between Epstein and Trump and wrote, “No credible allegation has emerged to connect Trump to any of Epstein’s crimes. If the full [Epstein] file is ever released, we are confident that no connection would be found.” That’s important to remember amid the media-driven excitement about the 2003 letter.

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