The furore over Donald Trump’s ties with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continued on Friday as new revelations about the pair’s relationship threatened to mire the president’s golfing trip to Scotland.
The US president’s name appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, according to reporting from the New York Times, lending further weight to reports that Trump participated in the leather-bound collection of messages, drawings and accolades – despite denying that he contributed a signed and sexually suggestive note and drawing, as reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
Trump’s name is listed among Epstein’s friends and acquaintances who contributed birthday messages for the professionally bound book which reportedly had multiple volumes, the Times reported. The tome opens with a handwritten letter, also reviewed by the Times, from the disgraced financier’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring to sexually traffic children. Maxwell is due to have a second meeting with US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche in Florida, where she is serving her term in federal prison, on Friday.
The collection includes around five dozen contributions from public figures and unknown acquaintances, according to documents reviewed by the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and was assembled before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006.
The birthday book controversy has deepened anger over the decision by Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, to backtrack on promises to release the Epstein investigative files.
Trump has responded to the growing backlash from his usually loyal supporters – and Democrats – over the U-turn with mounting fury, claiming that news reports over the birthday book were fake news.
Last week, Trump sued Journal’s billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch, publisher Dow Jones and two Journal reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent Epstein a signed lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman as part of the birthday book.
“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal reported of the alleged drawing. The letter allegedly concluded: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump followed the lawsuit, which seeks $10bn in damages, by barring Journal reporters from this weekend’s trip to Scotland, where he will meet the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, for trade talks at the president’s golf resort in Turnberry on Scotland’s east coast.
He also called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Epstein to be publicly released, insisting that he had nothing to hide. On Wednesday, a district judge in Florida denied a request by Trump’s Department of Justice to unseal the transcripts.
Congress was sent home early for summer recess by House speaker and Trump loyalist Mike Johnson, in an effort to quell Democrat demands for a vote on the Epstein files.
But Trump’s desire to play down his relationship with Epstein has been repeatedly thwarted by a steady drip of evidence – photos, videos, books and witnesses – that strongly suggest his name could appear in the files.
Earlier this week, CNN published newly uncovered photos and videos that show Epstein at Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples, and the pair at a Victoria’s Secret event in 1993, seemingly joking with Trump’s future wife, Melania Trump.
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The Times then reported that even before the birthday anthology, Trump had written another gushing note to Epstein in 1997. “To Jeff – You are the greatest!” reads an inscription in a copy of Trump’s book Trump: The Art of the Comeback that belonged to Epstein, which the Times said it had reviewed.
And the Journal reported more details on the birthday book, which Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein recalls Maxwell putting together.
The contents page was organized into categories, with Trump and Bill Clinton listed under the “Friends” group, according to the Journal. A message in Clinton’s distinctive handwriting reportedly read: “It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friend.”
Also listed as a friend is the Labour politician and current UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, whose tribute, the Journal reported, included photos of whiskey and a tropical island, and referred to Epstein as “my best pal”.
Clinton has previously said that he cut ties with Epstein more than a decade before his 2019 arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes. In 2023, Mandelson told the Journal that he “very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein”.
Democratic representative Ro Khanna of California has said he will subpoena Epstein’s estate to hand over the book.
As Trump travels to Scotland, deputy US attorney general Todd Blanche will meet with convicted sex trafficker Maxwell at the Florida prison where she is incarcerated for a second day of interviews.
