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Donald Trump’s alleged “bawdy” letter to Jeffrey Epstein that features a hand-drawn figure of a naked woman along with the president’s reported signature has now been made public after lawyers for the estate of the deceased sex offenderprovided a copy of the birthday book to the House Oversight Committee.
“President Trump called the Epstein investigation a hoax and claimed that his birthday note didn’t exist. Now we know that Donald Trump was lying and is doing everything he can to cover up the truth,” Oversight ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said on Monday after House Democrats shared the image on social media. “Enough of the games and lies, release the full files now.”
The publication of the letter comes two months after The Wall Street Journal first reported on its existence, noting that the “bawdy” card was allegedly sent to Epstein in 2003 as part of a 50th birthday present to the now disgraced financier. The card features the figure of a nude woman with Trump’s signature seemingly mimicking pubic hair.
The president has denied writing the letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday, calling it a “fake thing,” and has sued both The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for defamation, claiming the letter is “nonexistent.”
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter reads. The card also features an imagined conversation between Epstein and Trump in which the president tells Epstein that “enigmas never age” and “we have certain things in common.”
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The image of the alleged birthday card that Donald Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein was released by the House Oversight Committee(X/@OversightDems)
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While the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X (formerly Twitter) to blast The Wall Street Journal for quickly publishing a story about the alleged letter, asserting that the image proved the president was correct to sue the paper.
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“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false,” Leavitt posted. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation ... This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”
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Trump and Epstein appear together in a photo on the side of a van. The estate of Epstein has provided an alleged birthday book to the Oversight Committee as part of Congress’s investigation into the handling of the case(Reuters)
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich also took to social media to insist that the signature wasn’t Trump’s and that News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, should quickly settle its lawsuit.
“Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich tweeted.
A spokesperson for the WSJ’s publisher Dow Jones said: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.”
While Budowich asserted that the signature was not the president’s, contemporary authenticated letters from Trump — such as one sent to iconic radio host Larry King in 1999 — feature signatures that are similar to the one included in the alleged birthday card.
Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Palazzolo, who is a named defendant in Trump’s lawsuit, responded to the White House’s denials by sharing a letter Trump wrote to Hillary Clinton in 2000 showing exactly the same signature as the one that features on the letter to Epstein. Palazzolo even compared the signatures to show the similarities.
The official social media account for the Oversight Democrats quickly released an image of the letter on Monday, saying: “HERE IT IS: We got Trump’s birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein that the President said doesn’t exist. Trump talks about a ‘wonderful secret’ the two of them shared. What is he hiding? Release the files!”
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The Trump administration’s handling of the investigation has sparked political backlash on both sides of the aisle(Reuters)
Following the president’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, which came amid a firestorm of criticism from Maga world over the administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein Files, Garcia and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) pressed Epstein’s estate to release the book in order to “assist in bringing transparency and accountability” to the case.
Lawyers for the deceased sexual predator’s estate turned over a copy of the book on Monday following a subpoena from the committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
On Monday evening, Comer accused Democrats of “cherry-picking documents and politicizing information” that had been received from the late pedophile’s estate, adding that Trump “is not accused of any wrongdoing and Democrats are ignoring the new information the Committee received today.” The Oversight Committee also published the entire contents of the birthday book along with other documents received from Epstein’s attorneys.
The 2003 birthday book, which was created three years before Epstein’s first arrest, is professionally bound and contains a number of other letters from prominent figures such as former President Bill Clinton, billionaire Leon Black and famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, among others.
Trump’s letter is listed under the “Friends” section in the book’s table of contents, alongside Bill Clinton’s. Before a falling out that Trump claims happened in the mid-2000s because Epstein poached employees from Mar-a-Lago, the president regularly socialized with the financier in both Palm Beach and New York. Trump also made numerous flights on the private plane belonging to Epstein, who was also frequently photographed at the president’s Florida estate.
The 2003 book was put together by Epstein’s longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years in prison on sex-trafficking charges related to Epstein’s alleged crimes. During a recent interview with Justice Department officials, Maxwell — who has since been transferred to a minimum-security prison facility — stated that she assembled the book but couldn’t recall the names of those who contributed letters.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that other people who assisted Maxwell on the project for Epstein’s 50th birthday recalled seeing Trump’s letter among the contributions while compiling the book.
Following months of promises to release the documents related to the Epstein case, which included Attorney General Pam Bondi claiming she had the convicted sex offender’s “client list” on her desk for review, the DOJ concluded in early July that there wasn’t a list of people who participated in Epstein’s trafficking of young girls, and that the financier died by suicide in jail. The memo also stated that no other documents would be released and no one else would face charges.
The memo sparked fury from many of Trump’s allies, who had long sought the release of the Epstein files. Meanwhile, the president has repeatedly pushed back amid the backlash, claiming that the files were nothing more than a politically driven “hoax” while urging his supporters to move on from the issue.
“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump griped to reporters last week, claiming that “nobody is ever satisfied” with the Epstein-related documents that have already been released. Trump’s most recent complaints came as a number of Epstein’s victims visited Capitol Hill to tell their stories to Congress and urge the president to release more records.
Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the claims that Trump authored the lewd birthday card, calling it a “fake scandal” in a social media post Monday evening.
“The Democrats don't care about Epstein,” Vance said in a post on X. “They don’t even care about his victims. That's why they were silent about it for years. The only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies. No one is falling for this BS.”
In the president’s $10bn lawsuit against Murdoch and the WSJ, Trump claims that “no authentic letter or drawing exists” while declaring that Murdoch “authorized the publication of the Article after President Trump put them both on notice that the letter was fake and nonexistent.”
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Additionally, the complaint takes issue with how The Wall Street Journal obtained a copy of the “bawdy” birthday card — which Epstein’s estate has now provided to Congress.
“Tellingly, the Article does not explain whether Defendants have obtained a copy of the letter, have seen it, have had it described to them, or any other circumstances that would otherwise lend credibility to the Article,” the lawsuit states. “That is because the supposed letter is a fake and the Defendants knew it when they chose to deliberately defame President Trump.”