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Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Congress gets the Epstein 'birthday book'

Donald Trump returned from a trip to the men's finals of the U.S. Open this weekend to more bad news.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee announced Monday that they'd received a collection of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.

Minutes later, The Wall Street Journal released an image of the letter it reported was collected by Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a "birthday book" for Epstein in 2003.

The letter was supposedly authored and signed by Trump. A signature on the image bears remarkable similarities to examples from both Trump's political and pre-presidential days.

Donald Trump and his team furiously deny the authenticity of the signature, and say that Trump neither penned the bawdy text referencing a "wonderful secret" shared by the two men nor drew the outline of a naked woman encompassing it. He sued the Journal for $10bn in response to the paper's original reporting.

But today's news puts a pin in the White House's previous line: that the letter doesn't exist at all.

Now, the president's team has to explain why the estate of a dead sex offender would have forged his signature — potentially as far back as 2003.

Maxwell, interviewed by a Trump loyalist in the Department of Justice, already confirmed the authenticity of the book — though she says she doesn't remember whether she solicited Trump for a submission.

The White House's narrative on the birthday book is becoming a lot trickier to maintain.

Read more here.

By John Bowden

Reading list

Daily briefing

A van bears an image of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein

Trump’s alleged bawdy birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein is now public

Donald Trump’s alleged bawdy etter 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 deceased sexual offender provided a copy of his 'birthday book' to Congress, Justin Baragona writes.

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He's a mean guy. Not a smart guy. Never was.

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