Democrats publish disputed Epstein birthday note said to bear Trump’s signature
House Democrats released a copy of a sexually suggestive birthday note from 2003 that they say was found in a keepsake album belonging to Jeffrey Epstein. The page, obtained from Epstein’s estate, features a short message bordered by a hand-drawn outline of a voluptuous female figure and appears to carry Donald Trump’s name and signature. The wording wishes Epstein a happy birthday and hints at keeping “wonderful” secrets.
Trump, through his representatives, flatly rejects any link to the page—either the message or the sketch. He says the tone isn’t his, and he doesn’t draw. His legal team is taking an aggressive posture, filing a $10 billion defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal after the paper reported on the existence and description of the note. The version made public by Democrats mirrors what the Journal described.
The House Oversight Committee’s Democrats say they received the birthday album as part of a wider document review tied to their examination of Epstein’s network and the institutions and people he interacted with. The committee has not released a forensic assessment of the page. A spokesperson said additional materials from Epstein’s estate are still being cataloged.
Republicans on the committee have not issued a formal response to the release. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the document. It’s not clear whether the committee will schedule a hearing or call witnesses over this specific item.
What’s known, what’s disputed, and what happens next
The page’s arrival in public view revives a familiar question: how to weigh documents tied to Epstein against a backdrop of intense political combat and long-running conspiracies. Trump has not been charged with any crime in connection with Epstein. Still, anything that appears to show personal familiarity becomes part of a broader record that lawmakers and reporters keep piecing together.
- What’s new: Democrats released a page from a 2003 birthday album attributed to Epstein’s circle that features a note and cartoon-like outline of a woman. The page bears a version of Trump’s name and signature.
- What’s disputed: Trump says he didn’t write the message or draw the image and calls the reporting around it malicious.
- What we don’t know: Whether the handwriting or ink matches known samples, who created the drawing, who compiled the album, and how the page moved from Epstein’s custody to his estate and then to Congress.
If the committee pursues authentication, the process is fairly straightforward in concept and slow in practice. Forensic document examiners would compare the signature and letter forms to known, dated exemplars from the same period. They’d test paper and ink to estimate age, look for alterations, and build a chain of custody record. A clean chain—estate to custodians to Congress—matters as much as pen strokes.
The album’s 2003 date puts it inside the period when Trump and Epstein moved in overlapping Palm Beach–Manhattan social circles. In a 2002 magazine profile, Trump spoke warmly about knowing Epstein and acknowledged his interest in younger women; years later, after Epstein faced criminal scrutiny, Trump said they had a falling out and that he was “not a fan.” Public photos have shown them at the same events in the late 1990s and early 2000s. None of that answers the narrow question of who authored the birthday note, but it explains why its tone is getting attention.
Epstein’s history is well documented. He pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting a minor, served time under a controversial deal, and was charged again federally in 2019 with sex trafficking. He died in federal custody that year, sparking investigations into jail conditions and a still-active fight over what his records reveal about powerful friends, clients, and enablers.
The legal battle over press coverage could prove as consequential as the page itself. Trump’s $10 billion demand against the Journal sets up a classic defamation fight about what journalists can report based on sourced documents and how they describe them. For a public figure, the standard requires proving “actual malice”—that a newsroom either knew a claim was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Expect early motions around jurisdiction, discovery, and whether any anti-SLAPP statutes apply, which can shift legal fees if a judge finds the claims target protected speech.
For the committee, next steps come down to scope. Lawmakers can ask the estate’s custodians for more albums, correspondence, and logs from the early 2000s; request sworn statements from people who assembled or handled the album; and seek expert analysis of the signature and artwork. If the goal is a public accounting, hearings could surface methodical testimony about what’s authentic, what’s rumor, and how the federal system failed victims twice—first in Florida, then again in 2019.
For Trump, the incentives are different. Deny clearly, fight aggressively, and frame the document as a smear tied to partisan timing. His statement hits those marks. If further releases land—text messages, calendar entries, guest lists—his team will focus on provenance, context, and whether items can be pinned to his hand or simply to his orbit.
For readers trying to parse where this goes, the markers to watch are mundane but telling: whether independent experts get access to the page; whether matching, dated exemplars of Trump’s handwriting from 2003 are produced; whether metadata or estate inventories corroborate the album’s origin; and whether the committee’s majority and minority agree on ground rules for any forensic review. Paper rarely lies, but it does demand patience.
