Newly released Justice Department documents appear to show an effort to get Donald Trump to contribute to Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book and reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized material about the project during its investigation into the sex offender.
A person whose name is redacted sent an email with the subject line “b-day book update” on Dec. 24, 2002, in which they appear to detail outreach efforts to Trump and other Epstein associates. Epstein’s 50th birthday was Jan. 20, 2003.
“LM for [REDACTED], George Mitchell, Donald Trump, Henry Jarecki, and Leon Black,” the person wrote, using an abbreviation that is commonly used for “left message.”
The 50th birthday book included contributions from dozens of people and a page bearing Trump’s signature and with the outline of a naked woman, The Wall Street Journal first reported last year .
Trump has denied writing the letter or drawing the picture , calling it a fake thing. He has filed a lawsuit against the Journal alleging defamation. The Journal has said it stands by its reporting and has asked a judge to dismiss the suit.
“These documents prove nothing,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email. “As President Trump personally told the Wall Street Journal at the time, President Trump did not draw this picture, nor did he sign it.”
Epstein’s now-imprisoned associate Ghislaine Maxwell enlisted the help of assistants and others to assemble the album, and as the letters and images came in, they were scanned into a computer, the Journal previously reported . Some of the people who assisted on the project recalled seeing the image bearing Trump’s signature among the documents at the time.
Trump said he cut ties with Epstein years before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges.
The FBI raided Epstein’s properties in 2019 and collected evidence. Another file recently released by the Justice Department shows that FBI agents seized at least four computer discs labeled “JE 50th Bday book.” There are images of at least five discs in the files as well.
A separate document provides a log of the discs, noting they were found in a “suitcase collected from Richard Kahn originally in safe located In closet in Room Q (3rd Floor).”
Kahn was Epstein’s longtime accountant and is serving as an executor of his estate. An attorney for Kahn declined to comment.
The sender of the Christmas Eve 2002 email wrote they had sent a FedEx to another potential contributor and then listed Trump, the Wall Street billionaire Black, former U.S. Sen. Mitchell, and Jarecki, a psychiatrist and billionaire.
Those names appear in the table of contents in the 238-page birthday book , which was obtained from Epstein’s estate and released on Sept. 8 by the House Oversight Committee.
The email sender also listed the individuals that Eva Dubin, one of Epstein’s former girlfriends, was pursuing for contributions, and people whom one of Epstein’s childhood friends was expected to contact. Several of those individuals also are listed in the book as contributors.
Dubin, Black and Mitchell have said they regretted their association with Epstein and were unaware of his crimes. Their representatives declined to comment further. Jarecki, who has said he didn’t participate in abusive conduct, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last summer that she recalled working on the birthday book but not the names of any individual contributors. She declined to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee on Monday, saying she would only testify if granted clemency by President Trump. An attorney for Maxwell didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Write to Khadeeja Safdar at khadeeja.safdar@wsj.com
