The public release of 238-page scrapbook given to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday – featuring letters suggesting the sex offender’s lecherous exploits were an open secret – has inserted fresh energy into public calls for answers about the elite circles he mixed with.
One of the sexually suggestive letters appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump and is believed to be the same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.
However, the full scrapbook also included a second, previously unknown reference to Trump. It is contained within an image showing Epstein standing among palm trees and holding an oversized cheque for $22,500 with a “Trump” signature on it.
Partly redacted writing below the image says Epstein showed “early talents with money + women” and suggest he had sold something or someone to Trump who was “fully depreciated”, a term in economics meaning the object no longer has value as it has already been used.
In the midst of a public outcry of a cover-up – including from Trump supporters – House Democrats on Monday released the scrapbook, which was largely a collection of celebratory letters from people who knew Epstein. All were glowing in admiration, and many were highly sexualised.
High-profile figures named as contributors include former president Bill Clinton and the current UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, as well as others in business, politics, academia and law.
Trump has not publicly responded to the release, but NBC News said it had spoken to the president, who responded: “I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.”
The letter attributed to Trump appeared to match a description in the Journal’s report from July. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below.
The message quotes Trump as saying: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” wishing that “every day be another wonderful secret”.
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement that the oversight committee had “secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist … It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”
The White House deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, suggested in an X post carrying a different version of Trump’s signature that the letter or the signature had been falsified.
“Time for news corp to open that check book, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote, referencing the defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Journal, over its original story.
But even though Trump more recently has signed both his first and last name together, for years he used only his first name in signatures, stylized with a line extending from the last letter – and Trump’s signature on a letter from 1995 closely resembled the one found on the note to Epstein.
Trump has separately denied drawing the figure or writing the note to Epstein. “The supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE,” he said in a Truth Social post in July.
The letter from the so-called birthday book was turned over to the House oversight committee in response to a subpoena issued by its Republican chair, James Comer, and a 25 July letter from Democrats Sylvia Garcia and Ro Khanna urging Epstein’s estate to produce the materials.
The committee released the entirety of the birthday book, which scanned pages showed was titled The First Fifty Years and was split into 10 sections including a prologue written by Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The leather-bound volume contained dozens of letters and images that were of a sexually explicit nature, ranging from drawings by “girlfriends” of Epstein receiving massages next to a pool, to photos of lions and zebras engaged in sex.
Other contributors included the billionaire Leon Black, the Harvard law school professor and one-time Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and Les Wexner, among others.
Trump previously denied having written or illustrated the note, dismissing it as “a fake thing” and insisting “these are not my words, not the way I talk”.
He later filed the defamation suit against the Journal’s reporters, publisher Dow Jones and News Corp. In response, a Dow Jones spokeswoman said: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.” The lawsuit sought $10bn in damages and specifically named the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has spent months shifting its position on whether Epstein-related files would be released or even if they existed at all, with Trump at one point calling them a “Democrat hoax”.
The House oversight committee, with participation from Democrats and Republicans, continues to review Epstein-related records. Epstein, a wealthy financier with numerous powerful connections, killed himself in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
