The release by Congress of a birthday greeting allegedly from Donald Trump to accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein prompted a new round of denials Monday by the White House.
A batch of documents released by the House Oversight Committee included a copy of the sexually suggestive greeting from 2003. The Wall Street Journal first reported in July on the existence of the birthday message. Trump denied signing such a document and filed suit against the paper as he was facing renewed scrutiny over his connections to Epstein.
The letter features an outline of a woman’s body and bears Trump’s signature at the bottom. It was among a collection of birthday greetings gathered for Epstein’s 50th birthday by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Top White House aides are pointing to discrepancies between the signature on the greeting and the president’s signature.
“Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!,” White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich wrote on X alongside images of Trump’s signature from his first presidential term and a copy of a signed book detailing his 2024 presidential campaign.
“As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on social media. “President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
News Corp., which owns the Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the signature on the birthday greeting shows apparent similarities to Trump’s signature from contemporaneous documents, including letters Trump wrote to Hillary Clinton in 2000 and to George Clooney in 2006.
The analysis also compares the drawing of a woman’s body to line drawings previously attributed to Trump.
