Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.
President Donald Trump is threatening to sue The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over a bombshell report detailing a cryptic birthday message he sent to disgraced financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein two decades ago.
Trump lashed out at the conservative publication on Thursday, describing its reporting as “fake” and claiming that the letter to Epstein wasn’t his.
Epstein and Trump were friends in the 1980s and 1990s. The two had a public falling out in 2004 over a property dispute. Trump previously described Epstein as liking “beautiful women as much as I do,” noting that “many of them are on the younger side.”
“No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” Trump said in a 2002 interview.
The letter The Wall Street Journal asserts is from Trump is part of a larger collection of messages from Epstein’s friends that were compiled into a book by his former girlfriend and confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, who helped him recruit girls into his sex trafficking ring (including one Maxwell discovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate).
According to the report, Trump’s letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman.” The president’s trademark signature appears below the woman’s waist, “mimicking pubic hair,” the publication noted.
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” Trump reportedly concluded the message.
The report from The Wall Street Journal, published on Thursday, comes as the Trump administration faces deep scrutiny — including from Trump’s MAGA base — over its lack of transparency regarding the federal case against Epstein. Trump had implied on the campaign trail in 2024 that he would release the Epstein case files as president.
On his Truth Social account, Trump blasted The Wall Street Journal, threatening legal repercussions for their publication of the report.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk,” Trump wrote.
He added that the letter in question couldn’t be his because he doesn’t “draw pictures” — a defense that is questionable, at best, as Trump has drawn and sold at least five pictures at auction over the years, and has stated in a book he authored in 2010 that he draws yearly to support charities.
Referencing Murdoch, Trump said, “I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third-rate newspaper.”
Vice President J.D. Vance also doubted the validity of the letter, calling it “utter bullshit.”
“Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?” Vance wrote on social media.
In response to Vance’s comments, HuffPost noted that the vice president was defending the integrity of “a man who was famously caught on camera saying stars as big as him could grab women ‘by the pussy.'”
When The Wall Street Journal asked Trump for a comment on the letter prior to the article’s publication, Trump told them he would sue if they published it.
Several commentators suggested that The Wall Street Journal wouldn’t have published the letter without vigorously fact-checking the letter’s origins with Epstein, given that Trump frequently threatens lawsuits against media.
“The president of the United States sues people for lots of money all the time — if you publish this, you know he’s likely to sue you,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said on his Thursday evening program. “People should just consider the amount of thought that went into whether they were going to publish this, on behalf of The Wall Street Journal, given…[Trump] explicitly threatening them, in their interview that he’s going to sue, and they’re assessing how believable this is.”
Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard also said that it was highly unlikely the letter was inauthentic.
“Very few people on the planet can say with absolute certainty that the lewd birthday letter is authentic. But The Wall Street Journal clearly believes it is — and given the legal risk of publishing something that could be defamatory, it’s safe to assume the paper verified its contents to a high standard,” Goddard wrote, adding:
If the letter were forged — never reviewed by prosecutors or dismissed as fake by the Justice Department — Trump allies like Pam Bondi or Kash Patel would almost certainly have said so by now. Neither has.
Adrienne Elrod, former senior adviser for the Harris campaign, said on CNN Thursday night that there were larger questions prompted by the explosive story.
The case “has caused the MAGA base to lose its mind. The question is, is the MAGA base going to come back together?” Elrod said.
Press freedom is under attack
As Trump cracks down on political speech, independent media is increasingly necessary.
Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from the frontlines of global conflict, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis and more.
Our work is possible thanks to reader support. Help Truthout catalyze change and social justice — make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation today.