CNN Legal Analyst Destroys Trump Over Epstein Letter Case: ‘Running Out of Options’

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig told anchor Kaitlan Collins that President Donald Trump is “running out of options” in his lawsuit over the birthday letter to deceased sex criminal and former Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein now that the note has been released.

Trump flipped out and sued the WSJ after it dropped a hotly anticipated profile of the Trump-Epstein relationship that included a highly suggestive note — the existence of which Trump’s attorneys vehemently denied.

That note — a cryptic 2003 birthday message framed by a crude doodle of a naked woman with a bushy signature where the pubic hair would be — was released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. It was part of a trove of materials provided by the Epstein estate.

The White House and a phalanx of Trump allies immediately insisted the signature was not genuine.

On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Honig said the release is a death blow to the lawsuit — and Trump’s denial “doesn’t actually matter”:

KAITLAN COLLINS: Elie, now that you can see this letter that allegedly bears Donald Trump’s name. Obviously, they’ve been denying that over at the White House, and saying that it proves their point. What impact, though, does this have on this lawsuit?

ELIE HONIG: Well, Donald Trump’s lead argument just went out the window, Kaitlan. Because, you said the key word in the intro to this show, Nonexistent. 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.

And it’s really important, Jasmine Crockett just made this point, the way that this letter came about is relevant, because it’s not as if the Wall Street Journal just said, Aha, here’s an image of the letter. No. We now have seen it, because Congress, the House, subpoenaed it from the Epstein estate, and that’s exactly where you would expect to find it, if it was as the Wall Street Journal says it was.

And now, Donald Trump is falling back to argument B, which is, I didn’t sign it. But you know what? Legally, that actually doesn’t matter. We’re all going to get out our magnifying glasses, and analyze how does he draw his letter D, and letter L. Doesn’t matter.

Because the Wall Street Journal doesn’t say definitively that he signed it. 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. He’s running out of options. I think this lawsuit was a long shot from the start, and it just got quite a bit longer.

COLLINS: Well, and the reporting was that Ghislaine Maxwell put this book together. And Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, actually asked her about the letter, when he had that interview with her, that rare interview, that happened in July.

I want you to listen to what Ghislaine Maxwell had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD BLANCHE, UNITED STATES DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Do you remember one way or the other, whether President Trump submitted a letter for his 50th birthday?

GHISLAINE MAXWELL, BRITISH FORMER SOCIALITE AND A CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER: I do not remember.

BLANCHE: And the article that references the letter talks about like a — sounds like either a naked — a picture of a naked woman or something like that. Do you have any recollection of that?

MAXWELL: I do not. But just — no, I don’t.

BLANCHE: Do you remember asking President Trump to submit a letter for that?

MAXWELL: I do not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: As an attorney, Elie, how does that sound to you, now that we could see this purported letter and drawing?

HONIG: That’s not going to help Donald Trump’s case one bit here, for a couple reasons.

First of all, Ghislaine Maxwell is full of it. I mean, this is a woman who, in that same interview, said she did nothing wrong, committed no crime, nobody else she knew of committed any crime, except maybe Jeffrey Epstein, and she’s openly campaigning for a pardon.

Second of all, they’re not going to be able — if this case ever gets to trial, and I doubt it will get that far, they can’t just play that tape of Ghislaine Maxwell. That would be hearsay. You could never put that in front of a jury.

They would have to actually call Ghislaine Maxwell to the stand, take her out of federal prison, march her up to the stand in district court, in front of a jury, and say to the jurors, You need to believe this person. That is not going to happen. So, that’s politics. That’s not going to influence or help them in this legal case at all.

Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.

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