Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, came armed with receipts on Thursday as he pushed back against the White House’s claim that a birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein bearing Donald Trump’s signature was a fake.
“Just last week, our committee released a birthday note that Trump personally wrote to Epstein. It’s right here,” Garcia said during a panel meeting. “Now, the cover-up of this note might be just as bad as a crime. … Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit to punish The Wall Street Journal for reporting on the birthday book, which he claimed didn’t exist. Now, of course, we verified that to the world. Now, experts have looked at this. Of course, this is Donald Trump’s signature. It certainly looks like the signature to me.”
To drive his point home, Garcia displayed a chart showing Trump’s signatures from 1987 through 2001 and compared them with the one on the 2003 note to Epstein. The similarities, he argued, were obvious.
The note itself raised eyebrows. It included the outline of a woman’s body with a message suggesting Trump and Epstein “have certain things in common.” Garcia called it “a disgusting message to send to a sex trafficker.”
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The White House has stuck to its line that the note was forged. FBI Director Kash Patel faced questions about it at a House Judiciary Committee hearing a day earlier. When Rep. Jared Moskowitz asked if he would investigate Epstein’s estate for releasing a fake document, Patel pushed back. “What’s the basis of such an investigation?” he asked.
“They literally put out a fake document — according to the president — with a fake signature. A forgery of the president of the United States’s signature. That’s the basis,” Moskowitz replied. “Sure, I’ll do it,” Patel said.
The controversy goes back to July when Trump sued The Wall Street Journal for defamation after the paper reported on the alleged birthday note. The letter was released by Epstein’s estate after a subpoena from the Oversight Committee, which is chaired by Republican James Comer. The White House continues to insist the document isn’t real.
“It’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this month. “President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
But Garcia and other Democrats argue the evidence is staring everyone in the face. For them, the real scandal isn’t just the note but the effort to deny it ever existed and to punish journalists for reporting on it.