Outside of the Reynolds Pamphlet, there is no evidence that the affair occurred; others connected with the scandal, from James Monroe, who held the papers relating to James Reynolds, to Maria Reynolds herself, said that it was a cover-up for a financial scandal.[12] Hamilton never produced the manuscript copies of Maria's letters, though the newspapers and Maria both suggested obtaining a handwriting sample. Hamilton said that they had been placed with a friend of his, who claimed that he had never seen them, suggesting that the letters could have been forged. The newspaper writers also pointed out that Maria's letters correctly spell long, complex words and yet sometimes misspelled simple words in a way that makes no phonetic sense; as Thomas Jefferson biographer Julian P. Boyd stated, the letters could resemble what an educated man believed an uneducated woman's love letters to look like.