President Donald Trump’s allies rushed to dismiss a report that he sent a salacious birthday letter to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, collected letters from Trump and dozens of other people in 2003 — a revelation that came amid intense new interest in the case.
Trump’s letter, which the paper said was reviewed as part of the criminal investigation of Epstein, bears his signature and “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker,” according to the Journal article.
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter reads.
Trump raged at the Journal for publishing the story, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and vowing in a post on Truth Social to sue the publication and its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The president, who is under pressure from supporters to direct the Department of Justice to release material from the Epstein investigation, has said his political opponents are behind the resurgence in interest in the case.
Prominent figures in MAGA world rushed to Trump’s defense after the Journal published its story.
“Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bullshit,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X. “The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it.”
“Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?” Vance added.
Even Elon Musk, whose relationship with the president has recently appeared to sour, said the letter “really doesn’t sound like something Trump would say” and “sounds bogus.”
Other high-profile MAGA figures and far-right activists, including Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer, deemed the letter — which The Wall Street Journal did not publish in its entirety — a fabrication.
“I’m calling bullshit on this Trump ‘birthday letter’ to Epstein,” Loomer said. “It’s totally fake. Everyone who actually KNOWS President Trump knows he doesn’t type letters.”
Trump has faced backlash from his base in recent days for his administration’s handling of the Epstein case. After hyping up files from the investigation that were rumored to expose a global “client list,” the president and his top officials have said there is nothing more to be learned from the unreleased material. Trump even lashed out at some of his own supporters as “weaklings” for believing the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax.”
The FBI and DOJ reported last week there is no client list and reaffirmed that Epstein’s 2019 death in a federal jail was suicide.