--- title: White House Stops Short of Saying Full Epstein Letter Is Fake description: Karoline Leavitt says a Trump birthday letter and check to Jeffrey Epstein are forgeries—but didn't say they were outright fabrications. canonical: https://time.com/7315735/trump-epstein-letter-check-karoline-leavitt/ author: Nik Popli article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-09-09T20:15:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T08:10:53.968Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House Stops Short of Saying Full Epstein Letter Is Fake og:description: Karoline Leavitt says a Trump birthday letter and check to Jeffrey Epstein are forgeries—but didn't say they were outright fabrications. og:url: https://time.com/7315735/trump-epstein-letter-check-karoline-leavitt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06148338a18adefd/6998c9a31f6709ee41f56b64/GettyImages-2233931687.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-BRIEFING-LEAVITT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House Stops Short of Saying Full Epstein Letter Is Fake twitter:description: Karoline Leavitt says a Trump birthday letter and check to Jeffrey Epstein are forgeries—but didn't say they were outright fabrications. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06148338a18adefd/6998c9a31f6709ee41f56b64/GettyImages-2233931687.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # White House Denies Trump Wrote Epstein Birthday Note—But Stops Short of Calling Documents Fake > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c2a60838-8da0-4552-a582-35e75dcf35c9&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: White House Insists Trump Did Not Write Epstein Birthday Letter, Stops Short of Saying Documents Are Fake [Watch (HLS stream): White House Insists Trump Did Not Write Epstein Birthday Letter, Stops Short of Saying Documents Are Fake](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NCsjiZAJ.m3u8) (3:22)  _Published 2025-09-09. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released a trove of letters from a birthday book made for the 50th birthday of late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. The White House continued to insist Tuesday that Democrats are pushing a "hoax" with the Epstein inquiries._  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Sep 9, 2025 8:15 PM UTC Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released a trove of letters from a birthday book made for the 50th birthday of late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003\. The White House continued to insist Tuesday that Democrats are pushing a "hoax" with the Epstein inquiries.  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Sep 9, 2025 8:15 PM UTC The White House on Tuesday forcefully rejected suggestions that President Donald Trump authored a [sexually suggestive birthday letter](https://time.com/7315441/trump-epstein-birthday-book-drawing/) to Jeffrey Epstein or signed a $22,500 [novelty check](https://time.com/7315609/epsteins-birthday-book-trump-clinton/) to the disgraced financier, insisting both documents were forgeries but stopping short of declaring them outright fabrications. “The President did not write this letter. He didn’t sign this letter,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing in which she said the Trump Administration would be open to a handwriting expert reviewing the signature on the 2003 letter and the President’s handwriting at the time. When pressed repeatedly on whether the documents were fake, Leavitt pushed back: “I did not say the documents are a hoax. I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels is a hoax. It is a distraction.” The newly public materials released Monday night by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee included a 238-page birthday album for Epstein and a redacted photo showing him holding an oversized check apparently signed by “DJTRUMP." The caption below the photo, which is partially redacted, reads: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ \[redacted\] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” Hours before the Republicans posted the records, the Committee’s Democrats [released](https://time.com/7315441/trump-epstein-birthday-book-drawing/) the letter in the birthday book signed by Trump. The records were provided by lawyers for Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena demanding financial records, contact books, and correspondence. For Trump, the disclosures are a reminder of a friendship he has long [sought to minimize](https://time.com/7302995/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-jd-vance/). Once close in Palm Beach social circles, Trump and Epstein were seen together [frequently](https://time.com/7302268/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-timeline-relationship-2/) in the 1980s and 1990s before a [falling-out](https://time.com/7302268/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-timeline-relationship-2/) in the early 2000s. Trump has said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for poaching spa employees, including Virginia Giuffre, later one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers. The committee’s release of Epstein estate materials has fractured Congress. Democrats seized on the birthday letter, which depicts the outline of a naked woman’s body framing a typed note from “Donald,” as evidence that Trump has not been forthright about the extent of his ties to Epstein. The letter concludes with the phrase: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret” along with what appears to be Trump’s squiggly signature. Trump has repeatedly denied writing the letter and sued _The Wall Street Journa_l, which was first to report on the letter, for defamation. Republicans have mostly downplayed the revelations. Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky accused Democrats of “cherry-picking” from the files. Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican leading a bipartisan push to compel the Justice Department to release all Epstein records, dismissed the birthday book as irrelevant: “It doesn’t prove anything. Having a birthday card from Trump doesn’t help the survivors and the victims,” he told reporters Monday. Asked if Trump planned to meet with Epstein’s victims, Leavitt told reporters: “I don’t have any meetings for you to read out on that.” She added that Democrats were “pretending to care about victims of crime” while ignoring broader issues of child exploitation. “They are desperately trying to concoct a hoax to smear the President of the United States,” she said. That message is in line with Trump’s own framing of the matter. In July, he called the story a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans, and foolish Republicans fall into the net.” Soon after the birthday letter became public on Monday, Taylor Budowich, a White House's communications aide, [circulated examples](https://x.com/TayFromCA/status/1965133529177878754) of Trump’s signature to argue the handwriting in the birthday letter is inconsistent. ## Transcript The Epstein files are back in the news, because a lot of Americans feel that those that Jeffrey Epstein's victims never got justice. As the president care about these victims, do you think he can? Does he want to deliver more justice for them? And is he willing to meet with them? The president cares about victims of all crimes. And that's why Republicans in the Trump Department of Justice have done more in terms of transparency when it comes to the Epstein case than any prior administration. And why are the Democrats all of a sudden caring about this? It's because they are desperately trying to concoct a hoax to smear the president of the United States. With the white House support. A professional handwriting expert review of the document released yesterday to prove that it's not the president's signature. Sure, we would support that. And in fact, I have already seen many forensic analysts of signatures coming out. I believe it was the Daily Signal that published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said that this absolutely was not the president's authentic signature. And we have maintained that position all along. The president did not write this letter. He did not sign this letter. And that's why the president's external legal team is aggressively pursuing litigation against the Wall Street Journal. And they will continue to. You know, Mike Johnson came out and said that the president was an FBI informant. Do you know what he meant by that? If it's not true. I can affirm that is not true. I think the speaker was referring to the fact that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar a Lago property, for reasons the president has already discussed. Just I want to follow up on something you said. You said Epstein documents are a hoax that Democrats are perpetrating against the president. You said he didn't sign that check, that he didn't sign the the birthday card that he allegedly signed. So what is the theory since these documents came from the Epstein estate? Who is who is, I guess, in your view, faking these documents? I did not say the documents are hoax. I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on on television is a hoax that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats like Ro Khanna and the others whom you saw on that press conference outside of Capitol Hill who are trying to push this hoax against the president of the United States. What exactly is the hoax? I'm just trying to understand what's fake. What's fake is not the document. The hoax is the Democrats pretending to care about victims of crime when they do not care about victims of crime, when they have done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapists across the country, and when they are now using victims as political props to try and again smear the president of the United States and drag on this bad story about him, it is a distraction. The Democrats view this story as nothing more than an attempt to distract from the accomplishments and the achievements of this administration, and that is what we mean when we call it a hoax. He didn't sign these. If you said he didn't sign the birthday card, he didn't do this. He also didn't do the check. Those were in documents from the estate. So what is the working theory as to why he's in them? The president has one of the most famous signatures in the world, and he has for many, many years. You know that, Maggie. You've covered him for a long time. Long before he assumed this office, when he was a businessman in New York. The president did not write that letter. He did not sign those documents. He maintains that position. And that position will be argued in court by his lawyers. The president is very confident he is going to win this case. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7315735/trump-epstein-letter-check-karoline-leavitt/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7315735/trump-epstein-letter-check-karoline-leavitt/"},"headline":"White House Denies Trump Wrote Epstein Birthday Note—But Stops Short of Calling Documents Fake","datePublished":"2025-09-09T20:15:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T08:10:53.968Z","description":"“The President did not write this letter. 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