WASHINGTON: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Donald Trump, which he has denied.<\/p>\n
The letter was included as part of a 50th birthday album compiled in 2003 for Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier who was once a friend of Trump\u2019s. The full House committee on Monday night released a copy of the entire album, which bore names of some other prominent figures such as former President Bill Clinton and attorney Alan Dershowitz in a \u201cfriends\u201d section, and included other letters with sexually provocative language.<\/p>\n
Trump has said he did not write the letter or create the drawing of a curvaceous woman that surrounds the letter, and he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for earlier reporting on his link to the letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I have said all along, it\u2019s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement posted on X. \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted various pictures on X of Trump\u2019s signature over the years and wrote, \u201cit\u2019s not his signature.\u201d<\/p>\n
As House Republicans left the Capitol on Monday night, many waved off questions about the letter, echoing a similar theme.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not his signature. I\u2019ve seen Donald Trump sign a million things,\u201d said Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.<\/p>\n
Rep. Thomas Massie, who is leading a bipartisan push for a House vote to force the Justice Department to release its Epstein files, downplayed the letter\u2019s relevance entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t prove anything. Having a birthday card from Trump doesn\u2019t help the survivors and the victims,\u201d Massie said.<\/p>\n
The release of the drawing comes as the president has for months faced increasing pressure to force more disclosure in the case of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them, while Maxwell was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by him.<\/p>\n
It also once again puts a spotlight on Trump\u2019s former friendship with Epstein, which the president has said ended two decades ago after a falling-out. Trump said recently that he cut ties with Epstein because he \u201cstole\u201d young women \u2014 including Virginia Giuffre, who was among Epstein\u2019s most well-known sex trafficking accusers \u2014 who worked for the spa at his Mar-a-Lago resort.<\/p>\n
The case against Epstein was brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of nearly identical allegations. Trump had suggested during the presidential campaign that he\u2019d seek to open the government\u2019s files into Epstein, but much of what the government has released so far had already been out there.<\/p>\n
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee received a copy of the birthday album on Monday as part of a batch of documents from Epstein\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n
Trump has denied writing the letter and creating the drawing, calling The Wall Street Journal report on it \u201cfalse, malicious, and defamatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don\u2019t draw pictures,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The letter released by the committee looks exactly as described by The Wall Street Journal in its report.<\/p>\n
The letter bearing Trump\u2019s name and what appears to be his signature includes text framed by a hand-drawn outline of a curvaceous woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cA pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday \u2014 and may every day be another wonderful secret,\u201d the letter says.<\/p>\n
The letter\u2019s disclosure comes amid a bipartisan push in Congress for the release of the so-called Epstein files amid years of speculation and conspiracy theories. Calls for the release of the records came from Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, before he was sworn into the country\u2019s No. 2 position.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department in August began turning over records from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation to the House Oversight Committee.<\/p>\n
The committee subpoenaed the Epstein estate for documents last month. In addition to the birthday book, lawmakers requested Epstein\u2019s last will and testament, agreements he signed with prosecutors, his contact books, and his financial transactions and holdings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Donald Trump, which he has denied. The letter was included as part of a 50th birthday album compiled in 2003 for Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier who was once a friend of Trump\u2019s. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86490,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86479\/revisions\/86490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}