Lawyers representing the Wall Street Journal have intensified their calls for the dismissal of Donald Trump’s billion-dollar defamation lawsuit, arguing that the former president is being unreasonable by not admitting that a letter for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, which was presented to Congress, matches the one described in the Journal’s reports. The letter, they argue, is the same “bawdy” correspondence the newspaper referenced, contradicting Trump’s claims.

In a detailed plea for dismissal with prejudice, which would prevent the case from being refiled, the Journal asserted on Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles has no reason to entertain Trump’s attempts to “ignore” documents released by the House Oversight Committee. These documents, the Journal argues, validate the accuracy of the article Trump claims defamed him. The Journal stated, “President Trump will never be able to establish that the Article is materially false because Congress has released the Birthday Book, which contains a letter bearing President Trump’s name, identical in appearance and content to the Article’s description.”

According to court documents, Trump wants the court to disregard the Committee’s publication, which he claims is “fake” and “nonexistent,” arguing that the information falls outside the “four corners” of his complaint. However, the Journal dismissed this claim as baseless and highlighted Trump’s flawed reliance on a separate defamation case involving former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz and CNN.

In the Dershowitz case, the filing noted, a federal judge acknowledged the legitimacy of considering a “government publication,” like the Epstein birthday book and its letters, once released by Congress. This precedent, the Journal argues, further undermines Trump’s position.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, has adamantly contested the notion that the letter mentioned in the Journal’s reporting is the same as the one disclosed by Congress, maintaining a firm stance against the Journal’s assertions.

Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito weeks ago vehemently resisted any conclusion that the letter referenced in the report and the letter released by Congress are the same.

“At most, the document shows that a letter was appended or referred to in a legislative press release—but nothing within any of the documents for which Defendant seeks judicial notice establishes that Exhibit 5 is the same letter referenced in the Article,” Brito wrote.

The Jeffrey Epstein birthday book letter, signed by ‘Donald’ (House Oversight Committee via Epstein’s estate)

In July, the newspaper reported that the “bawdy” letter included a drawing of a “sketch” of a naked woman’s body with “Donald” signed “below her waist” seemingly “mimicking pubic hair.” The letter also contained a “typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person,” which included the line: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Trump threatened to sue the WSJ prior to the publication, then immediately sued the next day in federal court, claiming that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

After Congress released the Epstein estate documents in September, the White House shifted to say Trump did not sign the letter or draw it.

The original theory of the Trump lawsuit was that the letter was “nonexistent” and made up by the Journal’s reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo with actual malice, harming the president’s reputation to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Crucially, the WSJ now answers that it “utterly defies reality” for Trump to claim that the letter referenced in the report and the letter released by Congress aren’t the “same,” because the quotes match up.

“[E]ven if the letter that Defendants reviewed is not the same letter produced by the Epstein estate and released by the House Oversight Committee—a proposition that utterly defies reality given that the Article directly quotes the letter released by the Oversight Committee—the Article is nonetheless true because it accurately describes the letter,” the filing went on.

Trump’s legal team, on the other hand, did not accurately quote the article when attempting to defeat the motion to dismiss, the defendants needled the plaintiff.

“President Trump simply misquotes the Article, asserting that it describes a letter about a ‘common secret’ that he had with Epstein,” the reply noted. “But the Article never says this. It reports on a letter bearing the President’s signature that includes the line, ‘Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.’ This vague phrase has no readily discernible meaning, and it certainly does not say that the President and Epstein share a ‘common secret.’”

The newspaper asked Gayles, a Barack Obama appointee, to take judicial notice of several exhibits, including the entire Epstein birthday book and the letter at issue, so the jurist can “consider them” when deciding the motion to dismiss.

The Journal argued that Trump “does not and cannot dispute” that the documents released to Congress pursuant to a subpoena are “authentic” insofar as they are “actual documents from the Epstein estate produced to Congress and subsequently released by Congress to the public.”

“Defendants ask the Court to consider these documents to establish that there was, in fact, a book of letters compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, one of those letters bore President Trump’s name and signature, and that letter contained a fictional conversation between President Trump and Epstein as well as a doodle of a naked woman,” the filing explained. “They are not asking this Court to determine what was or was not seen by Wall Street Journal reporters.”

Again defending the article as “true,” the Journal said its report made no claim that Trump wrote the letter but merely stated a letter existed which “bore President Trump’s name and signature” and that the letter was included among many other submissions for Epstein’s 50th birthday book. In addition, the newspaper said, the report noted the president denied he authored the letter.