On Monday, the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee reportedly obtained a drawing that it said was made by President Donald Trump of a naked woman, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The drawing is accompanied by a birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. The message is signed at the bottom with a signature that looks similar to how Trump typically signs his first name.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the existence of the drawing in July, noting that it appeared in a leather-bound compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003—filled with poems, photos, and messages from friends and business associates and compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate who was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021. Trump has since sued the paper and owner Rupert Murdoch for libel and slander.
Trump and the White House have repeatedly denied that he made the drawing. In July, he said, “I never wrote a picture in my life.” Days later, the New York Times released a lengthy report detailing Trump’s long history of doodling and often selling the drawings at various charity auctions. A sketch of the Manhattan skyline he made in 2005 sold for nearly $30,000 at auction in 2017.
“The Oversight Committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Robert Garcia, a representative from California and the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”
On Monday, the White House’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt and its deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich again denied that Trump drew the image or signed the message. Budowich argued that Trump’s signature is more angular than the one depicted in the image, though the New York Times said it reviewed several pieces of personal correspondence from the time period that showed similar signature as the one on the image, including how Trump wrote “a long tail of ink at the end of the final ‘d’ in ‘Donald.’”
The infamous birthday book was provided to Congress from Epstein’s estate, which also gave the Oversight Committee a copy of his will, entries from his contacts list and address book, information about his bank accounts, and more.
