WSJ reveals Trump's alleged 2003 Epstein birthday letter; Trump sues for $10 billion

On July 17, 2025 — in the same window that President Trump was reversing his campaign promise and branding the Epstein case a “hoax” — the Wall Street Journal published a report that put his own name at the center of the controversy.

The Letter

The Journal reported that a leather-bound album assembled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 contained a letter bearing Donald Trump’s name. According to the report, the typed note was framed by the hand-drawn outline of a naked woman and closed with the line, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump’s signature, the Journal said, appeared below the figure’s waist. The album had been compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell from contributions by Epstein’s associates.

Trump’s Denial and Lawsuit

Trump immediately and categorically denied writing or drawing the letter, calling the story “fake” and the drawing “not the way I talk.” Within a day he filed a defamation suit seeking $10 billion in damages against the Journal, its publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch personally, alleging the paper had published a fabrication with actual malice.

The Litigation

The lawsuit became a running subplot of the broader scandal. In April 2026, a federal judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Trump had failed to plausibly allege the Journal acted with “actual malice” — the constitutional standard for defaming a public figure. Trump refiled the $10 billion claim on May 28, 2026, after the disputed letter had been made public by the House Oversight Committee, which had obtained the birthday album directly from Epstein’s estate. The fight over a single page of a 2003 birthday book underscored how directly the files implicated the president who controlled their release.