The White House said Monday that The Wall Street Journal won’t be included in the press pool on President Donald Trump’s upcoming trip to Scotland because of its story that Trump sent an off-color birthday letter to the late accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the Journal’s “fake and defamatory conduct” for not being one of the 13 media outlets to accompany Trump to Scotland this weekend, Politico first reported.
“The Wall Street Journal or any other news outlet are not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Thirteen diverse outlets will participate in the press pool to cover the President’s trip to Scotland. Due to The Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the 13 outlets on board.”
The Journal reported Thursday that Trump’s “bawdy” letter to Epstein was one of dozens collected and assembled into an album by convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The Journal said the letter purportedly sent by Trump included a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman that concluded, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Ahead of publication, Trump denied writing the letter and drawing the picture.
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he told the Journal. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
Further, Trump threatened to sue, which he did on Friday, filing a $10 billion lawsuit alleging libel by Rupert Murdoch; the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones; and the reporters who wrote the article.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 after being charged with federal sex trafficking, accused of grooming young and underage women for sexual abuse by his friends and contacts.
The White House’s decision bars Tarini Parti, White House reporter for the Journal, from traveling on Trump’s four-day trip to his golf courses in Turnberry and Aberdeen. Parti was not one of the reporters connected to the Journal story in question.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on charges that included sex trafficking of a minor and sentenced to 20 years in prison for recruiting and grooming multiple minor girls to be abused by Epstein over the course of a decade.
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