Attorneys representing the Wall Street Journal are intensifying their efforts to have Donald Trump’s billion-dollar defamation lawsuit dismissed. They argue that the former president’s refusal to acknowledge the authenticity of a birthday letter—provided by the estate of the notorious Jeffrey Epstein and handed to Congress—undermines his claims. This letter, according to the Wall Street Journal, is the same “bawdy” correspondence referenced in the newspaper’s coverage.

In a recent filing aimed at securing a dismissal with prejudice, which would prevent the lawsuit from being refiled, the Journal underscored the lack of grounds for U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles to grant Trump’s request to disregard the House Oversight Committee’s document release. The attorneys argue that this release corroborates the accuracy of the article Trump claims to be defamatory.

The court documents state, “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.” The documents further highlight Trump’s insistence that the court ignore the publication of the Birthday Book, as he claims it is “fake” and “nonexistent.”

The Journal dismissed this argument as baseless. They also addressed Trump’s reliance on a previous defamation lawsuit filed by former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz against CNN. The Journal argued that the case “recognized” a federal judge’s ability to acknowledge a “government publication,” which includes the Epstein birthday book and its content, given Congress’ release of these materials.

That case, the filing said, “recognized” that a federal judge can take notice of the existence of a “government publication,” which the Epstein birthday book and the letters therein are by virtue of Congress’ release of them.

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.