Retired FBI signature expert Wayne Barnes said after analyzing President Donald Trump's signature on a letter supposedly written to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday in the early 2000s.
Trump has consistently denied writing the letter, which was part of a book Epstein's friends put together for him, since the House Oversight Committee released it earlier this month after the letter was leaked to the press.
After looking at the letter, which had a suggestive message superimposed over a woman's body, Barnes said the first-name-only signature looked similar to the one on other personal letters sent by Trump to friends.
But there was one critical difference between Trump's Epstein letter and the others: the color of the paper.
Only the Epstein letter was on white paper. Every other letter Trump sent that bore his signature was on colored paper, Barnes said.
"Whoever created the dialogue page seems to have put a good deal of thought into it, but something was overlooked," Barnes wrote. "By far, the pages where Mr. Trump signs with his first name only, are outgoing letters where there is some coloration to the paper used. It is off-white or yellow-to-beige, but it never seems to be white.
"That means that if someone cut out an appliqué of the 'Donald' signature and tried to affix (paste or tape) it to a piece of white paper, the difference in color around the 'Donald' would stand out. So, the colored paper had to be photocopied onto a white page, so the trimming around the signature could take place and not be observed because of a different tone of the paper," he continued.
"This would mean that the ultimate color of the target paper used, on which to place the applique, would also have to be white, which is the case with the dialogue page in the birthday book," he added.
Why would a different colored paper make such a difference in whether Barnes thought Trump actually wrote the letter to Epstein?
Barnes explained,
Mr. Trump’s standard is colored paper which, it is highly likely he would have used for any outgoing letter, no matter the recipient. It is just what he does. The creator of the dialogue page could not have made his creation appear 'real,' without it all appearing to be on white paper, which is against Mr. Trump’s personal standard. It is unlikely that the culprit thought this far outside of the box, but as a professional investigator, it is in my wheelhouse to consider such things.
"A thorough investigation indicates it is highly unlikely that he penned (or with a felt-tip marker or Sharpie) or wrote his name beneath those dialogue lines and the drawing," Barnes concluded.
Barnes said it wasn't a case of someone "forging" his signature, but of fraudulently affixing it to the letter.
The result is the same--he doesn't believe Trump wrote the letter, but that someone photocopied the signature onto it.
Barnes is a 29-year veteran of the FBI and still testifies as an expert on cases during his retirement.
