White House: Trump 'did not sign' Epstein birthday letter

President Donald Trump said today that he won’t comment further on the letter inside Jeffrey Epstein’s “birthday book” allegedly bearing the president’s signature, telling NBC News it’s a “dead issue.”

“I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue,” Trump said in a brief phone interview with the network this morning. “I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.”

This is the first time Trump has been asked about the letter since it became public. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee posted an image of it on Monday after the panel obtained the letter through Epstein’s estate, though the Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence and described its contents earlier in the summer.

Trump denies he wrote the letter, which also contains a drawing of the outline of a woman’s body and breasts. He sued the Journal for its initial reporting.

The White House said again Monday that Trump did not write the letter and that it doesn’t match his signature. However, the signature is similar to those on some letters Trump signed around the same time.

On Capitol Hill, the effort to pry loose more records from the Justice Department’s Epstein case files is proceeding on two tracks.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed a probe underway by the House Oversight Committee will “uncover things that have never been uncovered before,” but critics say it will yield little information that isn’t already known to the public.

The other, more attention-grabbing effort is being led by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is seeking to bypass leadership and force a floor vote on his bill – with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California – to compel the full release of the documents.

CNN's Dana Bash discusses with her "Inside Politics" panel. #CNN #News