On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Trump stooge James Comer (Republican-Kentucky) released several documents related to the sex trafficker of children Jeffrey Epstein. The most noteworthy is the “birthday book” compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s long-time associate and partner in crime.
The book is divided into separate chapters including: “Girlfriends,” “Children,” “Girl-friends,” “Friends” and “Special Assistants.” In a section of the book titled “Girlfriends” there are various photos of Epstein on beaches and on ski slopes, pictured with expensive cars and different women, including Ghislaine Maxwell. The section “Children” includes drawings, letters and pictures, including of what appears to be a prepubescent girl playing the piano.
In releasing the book, Comer made clear his intent was to try and protect Trump. “It’s appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today,” he wrote in a statement.
Comer denounces Democrats for “cherry-picking” the Epstein files, but the real bipartisan consensus is to cover up. The Democrats have taken up the Epstein crisis not to expose the crimes of the ruling class, but to divert mass opposition to Trump’s ongoing coup—his mass deportation operation, his military occupation of major American cities, his open embrace of fascist methods. Republicans, for their part, defend Trump outright. Neither party represents the interests of Epstein’s victims or of the working class.
The book is titled “The First Fifty Years” and is filled with lewd letters, drawings, pictures and poems from some of the world’s richest people, whom Epstein considered “Friends.” Many of the lewd letters penned by Epstein’s rich associates leave no doubt that Epstein’s friends, including Trump, were well aware and accepting of his lust for young women and girls.
One letter begins: “Birthday greetings to Degenerate One,” noting there were “so many girls, so little time.”
The “Friends” listed in the book include presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Clinton wrote:
Jeffrey—
Happy 50th. It’s astonishing, isn’t it, to have lived so long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventure and work, and still to have your irresistible curiosity, the drive to make a difference, and the need of friends.
Bill Clinton
One of the most damning entries in Epstein’s “birthday book” comes from Donald Trump himself. In a grotesque parody of a film script, Trump’s note is printed inside the outline of a naked female torso, a dialogue between himself and Epstein, including the line, “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?”
The disgusting poem ends with the words: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Beneath this appears Trump’s unmistakable signature. The entry, with its references to the pair’s “certain things in common,” drips with a tone of shared complicity.
In July 2025, Trump sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for first reporting on the lewd and incriminating birthday greeting. At the time Trump claimed he didn’t “write drawings.” Following the release of the book, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Monday evening on social media, without any evidence, that the drawing was a forgery. She wrote that “it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”
Seeking to protect Trump, several Republican congressmen likewise claimed on Monday that the signature itself was a forgery. “From what I see, it’s not his signature,” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said.
Last week, prior to the release of the book, two Republicans, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, claimed that Trump’s close association with Epstein was due to the fact that he was acting as an “FBI informant.” Johnson said Trump “was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (South Carolina) similarly claimed that Trump was an “FBI informant” who “talked to the feds to get his guy turned over.” Asked on Monday if he stood by his comments, Johnson retreated, saying, “I don’t know if I used the right terminology.”
Another entry in Epstein’s “birthday book” implicates Trump. In a photograph, Epstein is shown grinning while holding an oversized check made out to him for $22,500 and signed “D. Trump.” Beneath it, the caption boasts that Epstein was “showing early talents with money + women,” describing how he “sells ‘fully depreciated’” women to Trump.
The author gloats that Epstein’s “people skills” were evident even then, though he himself “didn’t get any of the money on the sale.” The casual treatment of women as commodities to be traded between Epstein and Trump, presented as a joke worthy of commemoration, underscores how normalized sexual exploitation was within this layer of the financial and political elite.
Other “friends” listed in the book include Leon Black, former Apollo Global Management CEO and a client of Epstein. Black paid Epstein over $150 million between 2012 and 2017 for alleged “financial advice.”
Another is Les Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret. In his letter to Epstein, Wexner wrote: “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is…” Underneath is an illustration of a women’s breast.
In his birthday greeting to Epstein, William Elkus, founder of the venture capital firm Clearstone, recalls Epstein visiting him in Iowa. He begins his letter by noting, “It’s no secret that Jeffrey appreciates beautiful women.” After claiming it’s “hard to tell the difference between the girls and the hogs in Southeast Iowa,” Elkus commends Epstein for making acquaintance in Iowa with a “spectacular tall blonde woman,” adding, “I’ll admit to wondering at the time whether Jeffrey somehow arranged the whole episode through some long distance escort service.”
In a statement to the New York Times Monday, Elkus claimed the letter was a “joke,” adding that Epstein’s “charisma” was “palpable.”
Others who sent less salacious but nevertheless warm greetings to Epstein include two former CEOs at Bear Stearns, where Epstein at one time worked, Alan “Ace” Greenberg and James “Jimmy” Cayne. Mortimer Zuckerman, billionaire and editor-in-chief of US News & World Report, also sent greetings.
Several sections of the book have names, pictures and faces redacted, yet what is included paints a vivid and disgusting picture of not just one man, but the entire criminal US ruling class.
In his birthday letter to Epstein, Nathan Myhrvold, “a former Microsoft executive and associate of Bill Gates,” according to Business Insider, frets that he is unable to come up with anything “profound nor funny.” So he sends several pictures of animals with engorged genitalia having sex.
One unsigned note titled “Castaways Vol. 1” begins:
“I was porking some girl in bed and Jeff brings in the maid to make bed. She left screaming and never came back. We [were] both in bed porking some girls. I said what do you think, while he’s shoving penicillin down my throat.”
Another letter sent to Epstein by “Nick” recalls an incident that “always had you [Epstein] howling with laughter.” “Nick” recalls Epstein and friends purchasing a prostitute and assaulting her in the back of a car.
One of the more disturbing and highly incriminating drawings in the book is a cartoon-like drawing divided into two panels. The left panel, labeled “1983,” features what looks like Epstein handing balloons and a lollipop to young girls.
The right panel is labeled “2003, what a great country!” It features Epstein reclining on a lounge chair surrounded by scantily-clad women massaging his naked body. In the background his estate on the US Virgin Islands is pictured along with his plane. One of the women in the 2003 panel has a tattoo of a heart and the initials “J.E.” on her buttocks.
The release of Epstein’s “birthday book” is not simply another lurid scandal. It is a window into the true character of the ruling class. Here are not only Wall Street speculators, venture capitalists and Silicon Valley financiers, but two presidents of the United States—one Democrat, one Republican—offering warm tributes to a man whose entire existence was bound up with the sexual exploitation of children. Their words, preserved in their own hand, strip bare the fraud of bourgeois morality.
Epstein was not an aberration. He was an organic product of a social order in terminal decay. His “network” was nothing less than the American and international bourgeoisie itself: billionaires, politicians, celebrities; all of them bound together by money, privilege and complicity in crime. The joking tone of the book—women described as “fully depreciated,” Trump celebrating “wonderful secrets” inside the outline of a naked body, Clinton praising Epstein’s “irresistible curiosity”—reveals the utter corruption of this stratum.