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JT Lewis, whose brother Jesse died in the 2018 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, received a signed letter from Donald Trump that he keeps in a frame above his living room couch and looks at every day.
He said he was “shocked” when images of the letter appeared this week in the highly publicized prosecution documents in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
The photo shows a draft of one of the president’s treasured unsigned letters placed in a box atop presidential memorabilia including newspaper articles and notes written on White House stationery.
It’s one in a series of photographs that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors say show Trump conflated presidential “memorabilia” with state secrets.
“I’m glad he kept the letter,” Lewis said Wednesday.
“This is the exact same document that was sent to me by Mr. Trump in June 2018,” he said, “except Jack Smith has blacked out my name and it’s unsigned,” he added. “Of course my copy is signed.”
In the letter, Trump thanked Lewis for visiting the White House “to discuss school safety.”
Trump’s letter told Lewis that the nation will never forget the tragedy that killed 20 children and seven adults in 2012, and thanked him for being a “poignant example of the healing power of helping others” through his organization. New Town helps Rwanda.
Six years after the Sandy Hook massacre and shortly after the Parkland high school shooting, Lewis and his mother, Scarlett Lewis, were invited to the White House to discuss the National School Safety Plan with President Trump.
Both mother and son were school safety activists at the time, JT through the now defunct Rwanda effort and Scarlett through her ongoing work. Choose a Love Movementadvocates for programs to equip children with life skills to prevent further mass shootings.
“He healed, in part, by helping others,” Scarlett Lewis told Business Insider on Wednesday about JT, who was 12 when his 6-year-old brother died.
“It meant a lot to JT that the president acknowledged it and wrote a letter and signed it himself,” she said. “And to see that it was still in his hands was very moving,” she said of Trump.
“He was shocked to see that Trump had kept the letter.”
J.T. Lewis said Wednesday he remains a big fan of Trump.
“I was actually just at a fundraiser with him in New Orleans two days ago,” he said.
“We could have reunited. I wish it had happened before then,” he said of the letter resurfacing. “I could have had a conversation with him about it.”
According to his obituary and multiple media reports, Jesse McCord Lewis died moments after yelling “run!” while leading his classmates to safety on June 30, which would have been his 13th birthday.
“Instead of fleeing himself, he stayed behind to help his ‘beloved teacher’ Victoria Soto, who was dying,” Scarlett Lewis told BI.
“Jesse saved nine of his classmates and many of their children have been in the news and graduated from high school to thank him for saving their lives,” his mother said.