Donald Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein are crumbling, as new reporting offers compelling evidence of a birthday book containing messages to the sex offender.
The president maintains that a letter he was reported to have written to Epstein for his 50th birthday is “fake,” but new photos and descriptions in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on Thursday suggest the birthday book exists.
Adding to evidence that he wrote a note, Trump was on a contributor list for the 2003 book that included the names of dozens of Epstein acquaintances, according to reports in the two newspapers on Thursday.
According to sources who spoke to the Journal, Epstein’s accomplice and former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, sought help from a number of people, including assistants, to put together the album.
A handwritten letter from Maxwell that introduced the book was highlighted in the Times piece. The letter says, “The idea behind this book was simply to gather stories and old photographs to jog your memory about places, people and different events.”
“Some of the letters will definitely achieve their intended goal—some well… you will have to read them to see for yourself,” it said. “I know you will enjoy looking through the book, and I hope you will derive as much pleasure looking through it as I did putting it together for you.”
In addition, Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told the Journal that he recalls Maxwell putting together the book for his brother’s birthday. Mark also contributed to the book, the newspaper noted.
The Times also published what it said was a previously undisclosed photo of Trump with Epstein and singer James Brown.
Trump blasted out a Truth Social rant mentioning Epstein shortly after the reports published on Thursday night, writing that “Radical Left Democrats are doing everything in their power to distract and obfuscate from our GREAT six months of service to America.”
“They have gone absolutely CRAZY, and are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM,” he wrote.
Last week, the Journal published bombshell reporting that Trump contributed a racy letter to the 50th birthday album, written in the drawn outline of a naked woman. Trump said the report was “fake,” and subsequently filed a lawsuit against the newspaper and its owner Rupert Murdoch.
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said, even though there’s evidence he’s drawn plenty of sketches. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
In its Thursday report, the Journal wrote that Trump was listed under the “Friends” category in the leather-bound book, along with former President Bill Clinton.
A handwritten message from Clinton in the book, according to the Journal, read: “It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends.”
Reached for comment, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Angel Ureña, referred the Daily Beast to a July 2019 statement stating that the former president “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
The statement said Clinton took four trips on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003, accompanied by staff and a Secret Service detail, and that he had not spoken to the disgraced financier in “well over a decade.”
According to The Journal, other contributors to the book included Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, fashion designer Vera Wang, media mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Epstein and Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, and ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner.
A lawyer who has represented over 200 victims of Epstein, Brad Edwards, told MSNBC on Wednesday that “multiple” victims had spoken of the book’s existence, and some even helped to compile it. He said Epstein’s estate possesses the book.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said afterwards he planned to subpoena the estate for the book. An attorney for the estate said it would “comply with all lawful process.”
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the new reporting.
In a statement to the Times, White House communications director Steven Cheung repeated his previous claims that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for “being a creep” and that “this is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
Cheung issued the same message on Tuesday after CNN published images of Epstein at Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples, adding further strain to Trump’s efforts to downplay their ties.
Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, texted the Journal that it was “writing yet another defamatory story about the President of the United States about an alleged letter they don’t even have because the President never wrote it.”
Epstein turned 50 in 2003, three years before his first arrest. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges, including soliciting prostitution from a minor, and served a lenient 13-month stint in a Palm Beach County jail.
In 2019, he was arrested again and charged with federal sex trafficking crimes. He died in jail while awaiting trial. It was ruled a suicide but led to substantial speculation and conspiracy theories that were stoked by Trump himself. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse and traffic underage girls.
The president reposted a tweet in 2019 that suggested Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in Epstein’s death. Trump has for years suggested that shadowy Democratic elites are part of a “deep state” working to undermine him, which has proven to be red meat for his base.
That rhetoric has come back to bite him recently, after he declined to release the so-called “Epstein files” his supporters have been demanding.
Trump and Epstein’s friendship in the ’80s and ’90s was already well reported, but the renewed media scrutiny and furore from his supporters over the files has shone new light on their relationship.
