The Deep State Jumped The Shark!

Michael Lebron, a legal analyst, sometime conspiracy theorist, and standup comic who posts as Lionel on his YouTube channel, had been off the Trump train for a few weeks, convinced Bondi and Bongino were covering something up. No longer, at the post embedded above:

We are hitting a Twilight Zone level of disconnect that I never even thought was possible. . . . I mean, if you'd have told me that we'd be talking about pube doodles, I'd think you were out of your mind. What is this story? What is it? What does it have to do with anything? He wrote, if you believe it, Trump wrote, a birthday note, jotted something, typewritten, I guess, to Jeffrey Epstein, and it's this weird kind of a cryptic -- he's writing this down, and he does doodle by the way. You know, Trump does doodle. . . . We're actually breaking down the word "enigma", whether he's used it or not, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and they said that in the outline of this thing, he writes in the name Donald in pubic hair, but nobody's seen this picture? So show us the picture! Is this even important?

Here's another Trump-Epstein skeptic doing a 180 on the story:

Ten days ago, I wrote “Yes, President Trump, We Are Still Talking About The Creep, Epstein”. Ten days later, I have flip flopped on my position and I no longer give a flying fig about anything Epstein related. Last night, the Wall Street Journal posted “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”. Stop the presses. For his 50th birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell curated a leather notebook filled with bawdy cards, including one birthday doodle from Donald Trump. Get me some freaking pearls to clutch.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse is of the same mind:

There are some who have speculated the recent tone and response by President Trump to those who requested release of the “Epstein files” may have been a proactive decision by Trump who knew the WSJ story was being assembled. However, the entire thing seems so over-the-top ridiculous it’s likely fake news or manufactured foolishness; akin to the Chris [Steele] claims of “tapes” showing President Trump standing on a bed in Moscow peeing on prostitutes (completely untrue and stupid).

Even David Brooks on the PBS News Hour is taking this line:

This is crazy to me. It's like — and I have to take account of Candace Owens, the people who — like, seriously, the people who invented the QAnon theory?

Somehow, all political conversation revolves around them? As far as I can understand — and this has been looked into — there seems to be no evidence so far that anybody can find that there is an Epstein list. There are a lot of people — and the fact that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein back in the day is the least surprising fact in American life. They're two rich guys with a little Playboy tendencies.

But like a lot of people, Donald Trump had a fight with Epstein, apparently in 2004, over real estate. And they broke. And Epstein was then arrested and indicted a couple years after that. So a lot of people knew Jeffrey Epstein in those days, and a lot of people broke with him, Bill Clinton, Les Wexner.

So the whole story seems to have disappeared almost immediately, and CBS's cancellation of Stephen Colbert turns out to have been much more consequential news. So I don't seem to need to spend much time debunking the WSJ story. But there are still puzzling aspects that I think are going to come back to bite the Journal.

First, the implications of the original WSJ story are that the leatherbound volume of birthday greetings to Epstein was one-of-a-kind; there was a single copy, and it's now in the possession of the Justice Department.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.

As best anyone can tell, this single leatherbound album remains in the possession of the Justice Department, as implied in this X post by Karoline Leavitt:

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…

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) July 18, 2025

She says, "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."

So esactly what did the WSJ reporters see, and how did they learn about it? Where exactly was this album physically located, and who had access to it? As best I can surmise, someone at the Justice Department, probably in New York or Washington, had access to what must have been very restricted Epstein evidence and saw fit to call the WSJ writers and tell them about it. However, the album was probably in an evidence room, it certainly couldn't be easily removed, maybe not even taken to a copy machine.

I would almost think the Trump note wasn't even copied on a copy machine and then faxed. I would guess whoever was talking to the WSJ went into the evidence room, pulled the album out, took a photo of the Trump note on their phone, and e-mailed it to the WSJ. That's what the writers were working with. And if they showed the White House the photo, given the capabilities of the NSA to search all e-mail, from everyone, everywhere, they'd identify who'd sent the photo immediately.

But this also makes me think whatever copy the WSJ was working with was pretty low quality. According to the story:

It 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.

. . . It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared.

If in fact the album is still in the Justice Department's possession, located in a closely conrolled evidence room, then it's likely the WSJ writers have never seen the real thing at all, much less had an opportunity to examine it closely. At best, they've seen some e-mailed photos of Trump's note and a few selected others, supported by unsubstantiated second-hand accounts of what else is in it.

And the writers will be highly reluctant to answer any questions about the album, as they would almost immediately lead to the identity of the source who had access to it, which must be among a very limited number of people at a high level with a reason to see it. (You want my bet? Maurene Comey, who led the Epstein prosecution in 2019.) This is a big reason the media is suddenly deciding this isn't much of a story after all.

This story is going to turn out to have been a big mistake by the deep state remnants within the Justice Department. The Trump team just this week fired Maurene Comey, and I wouldn't rule out the WSJ piece as part of the reason; I suspect they knew about the story well in advance, as Sundance suggests above, and had already followed up. But a good many people are also now asking, "Is that all they have? This is ridiculous." They may once have had six ways from Sunday to try to get Trump, but it almost seems like they've come to the end of their ammunition.