When I came forward, I was willing to pay the price.

I'm a little shocked at how big the price is, but I'm glad I did it.

I'm glad I did it.

Hello and welcome to why is this happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

Well, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump had written a strange, lewd letter to Jeffrey Epstein on the occasion of a 50th birthday that included a sketch of a naked woman, his signature where her pubic hair would be,

and then a kind of odd bit of dialogue, sort of third-person dialogue between the two of them.

That was about how enigmas never age and may every day be a wonderful secret. When that was reported, Donald Trump did what he tends to do in these situations. He went nuclear. There's a bunch of things he could have said. He could have said, you know, it's not a secret. Jeffrey and Epstein and I were friendly for a number of years. I have no recollection of this. But if I did contribute to it, I think he's a sicko and I cut off ties of them.

Like, there's a bunch of things you could do, right?

But that's not what Trump does.

Trump says it went nuclear, ballistic, tried to lobby Rupert Murdoch to kill the story, threatened to sue, called it fake, and then did sue.

And has now sued, I believe the reporters

are named and Rupert Murdoch, I think for billions of dollars, I'm not mistaken, for defamation.

Now, the thing about, then I should say subsequently, the lawsuit journals reported more about

this book, which had other people who contributed to it, including Bill Clinton, who did not write anything remotely as cryptic and creepy as Trump, although it did talk about Epstein's childlike curiosity, which I was like a little like, eh, but also Vera Wang and Leon Black, a big finance guy. So there's a bunch of people in there. Clearly, I think,

I mean, I can't say definitively. I've not confirmed. NBC News is not confirmed. The book exists, right? So now it's like, well, we're all the rest of them fake? Or was just the Trump one? Like, so the point isn't the reality or the lack of reality in this case. I think it's almost certainly the case that the reporting is solid.

It would be crazy for it not to be. It's to use civil litigation as a kind of tool of intimidation.

This is, I mean, Donald Trump is probably one of the most frequent litigants in America.

I mean, suing and being sued. I don't have the

numbers offhand, but this is what he does. It's where he thrives. And a lot of times,

the point isn't an outcome, right? It's just a point of leverage. It's to get some negotiated

settlement. We've seen this with lawsuits. He's leveraged against different companies, media companies,

that essentially have functioned as what appeared to all the world, like solicitations of payments,

...