“Enigmas Never Age”

A creepy letter surfaces, and I have an admittedly wild thought

I’m in a board of directors meeting all day for the Human Rights Campaign here in D.C., but before I head down to it this morning, I wanted to share a thought. I hope it doesn’t sound too tin foil hat, but I can’t really shake it.

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal—not a paper known for being very liberal—there was a blockbuster story. Here is what I hope works as a gift link to it.

Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo reported that for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell had prepared a special gift for him: a leather-bound album with messages from Epstein’s friends.

Among those friends, and with a letter of his own, according to the WSJ, was Donald Trump:

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Trump issued a denial on his Truth Social platform, saying the letter was FAKE, that those were not his words or the way he talks. “Also, I don’t draw pictures.”

Trump of course does draw plenty of pictures, particularly of the NYC skyline, using a heavy marker. So that bald lie already undermines him considerably. As The Daily Beast reported,

In his 2008 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success, Trump wrote about his “new talent,” adding he usually draws for charity and that “it takes me a few minutes to draw something, in my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers.”

He continued: “Art may not be my strong point, but the end result is help for people who need it.”

As for the letter itself, its text is riddled with code, and it nearly drips with menace and long-kept secrets. It was a typewritten note, of a sort Trump has sent many celebrities and politicians, inside the outline of the naked woman Trump had drawn. It contained some sort of imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein.

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Another wonderful secret? Really?!

And what “certain things” did they have in common? We all know what we’re thinking while reading it, and it’s really quite nauseating.

But the part that jumped out at me was this line:

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

First off, “enigma” is not a word many would expect Trump to use. And his MAGA apologists have quickly latched on to that as evidence that the letter is, as Trump now claims, a hoax and a forgery. But it turns out, he did use the word before, while criticizing Ben Carson on the campaign trail in November of 2015 during a speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa, which he seemed to joke was also a play on the “n” word.

So assuming Trump did know this word and did write the letter, perhaps he simply was referring to Epstein as an “enigma” because, at age 50, Epstein really hadn’t aged much.

But something kept bothering me. “Enigma” was an odd word for Trump to include out of context. Could it refer to something else here? They clearly had said this bit to one another before, or why include something so random in the letter? It would make no sense without some inside code or joke. And where had I heard that word before?

Ah, yes. “Enigma” was the name of Alan Turing’s code breaking machine used by the British during World War II to decipher Nazi communications. A movie about that came out in 2001 a couple of years before this party.

Then it struck me: The Enigma Girls. There was a recent book out about them.

As the author of the book Candance Fleming told the New York Times last year, this was a work of non-fiction.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Trump and/or Epstein had never heard of the Enigma Girls, and the coded language between him and Epstein in that creepy letter about “enigmas” was simply coincidental.

But Trump started going off about a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats and Comey right after the Wall Street Journal contacted him about this story, so he was already worried about what the letter said.

He may not have remembered what he’d written. He may have been worried that he’d been too open. But men who commit heinous crimes together generally learn to speak carefully when referencing them.

A pal is a wonderful thing.

They might even talk in code—and pledge to take information that big to the grave.

Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.