A crude drawing that President Donald Trump reportedly gifted convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 has been released by the House Oversight Committee.
The sketch, first revealed by the Wall Street Journal, which was also first to detail the drawing in July, features lines of text inside a marker outline of a naked woman, with Trump’s apparent signature strategically placed where her pubic hair would be.
Trump claimed that he did not create the drawing, insisting he has never drawn.
“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” Trump said. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women.” He has since filed a libel lawsuit against the paper and its owner Rupert Murdoch, seeking $10 billion in damages.
A birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein apparently signed by Donald Trump. Photo: @OversightDems on X.
“The Oversight Committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Robert Garcia a Democrat representative from California on the committee, said in a statement to the New York Times.
Upon the release of the sketch, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, denied that the note carried Trump’s signature. The New York Times, however, compared Trump’s signature on the birthday drawing with those on his correspondence from 1987 to 2001 and found that they “closely matched.”
Donald Trump Untitled (2005). Photo: courtesy of Nate D. Sanders auctions.
Trump’s assertion that he doesn’t draw is also undercut by the fact that he actually has sold numerous sketches—to the point where he has a dedicated artist page on Artnet.
The two auction results in the Artnet Price Database are $15,000 for a city skyline at Sotheby’s New York in 2020, and $4,480 for the George Washington Bridge at Julien’s Auctions in Los Angeles in 2019. But Trump art has fetched even more at auction houses not included in the PDB, such as the $29,184 brought in for his 2005 sketch of the New York City skyline, and a $20,000 work at Heritage Auctions, both in 2017.
What Kind of Art Does Trump Make?
Trump’s known drawings, which he mainly did for charity, seem similar in style, if not subject, to the work described by the WSJ.
“Trump’s cityscape is a business card blown up,” Jerry Saltz wrote of the Trump drawings in New York. “The lines are thick and joyless. The people are often missing or reduced to stick figures. The weather doesn’t show up. There’s no scale, no depth, no light, no curiosity. Each one a closed loop. A thing to be framed and sold. Like the man himself.”
Trump admitted that “art may not be my strong point,” in his 2008 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success. “It takes me a few minutes to draw something, in my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then sign my name, but it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York.”
This Donald Trump sketch of the New York City skyline sold for $20,000. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
How Did Donald Trump Know Jeffrey Epstein?
Trump and Epstein reportedly met in 1990, after Epstein bought a home a stone’s throw from Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach golf club Trump has owned since 1985. The two appear to have enjoyed a long friendship before a falling out over a real estate deal around 2004.
Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a child prostitute in 2005, and was arrested again on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in 2019. His death in jail later that year—which the medical examiner ruled a suicide—has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997. Photo: by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump, who rode on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times, told New York in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
That social life involved many rich and powerful men, including former President Bill Clinton and high-profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz, prompting widespread speculation that Epstein was not alone in his abuse of young girls and women.
To date, there has been no proof that Trump was party to or aware of Epstein’s sexual activities with underage girls. But he is the subject of many of his own allegations of sexual misconduct, including accusations of rape by writer E. Jean Carroll. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her.
A protest group holds up signs of Jeffrey Epstein in front of the federal courthouse. Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.
Epstein Also Had Ties to the Art World
Trump’s drawing for Epstein was reportedly part of a larger collection of notes from friends amassed by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime partner, a British socialite. (The House Oversight Committee voted today to subpoena Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in jail after her conviction for child sex trafficking, and the Justice Department is looking to speak with her.)
The birthday album reportedly also included a note from billionaire art collector Leslie Wexner. “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is…” it read, with a crude drawing of a woman’s breasts.
Wexner, who was a major funder of Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, named in honor of his father, is the only known client of Epstein’s financial firm. In an exclusive 2019 article, Artnet News reported that Maria Farmer, an artist, accused Epstein of raping her at Wexner’s Ohio home after Epstein arranged an artist residency for her there in 1996. Farmer met Epstein as a student at the New York Academy of Art, where he was a board member.
Farmer made a complaint to the New York Police Department in 1996, and also spoke with the F.B.I. that year, and again in 2006. She encountered Trump at Epstein’s home once, in 1995, where she recalled being scared as Trump stared at her bare legs. “No, no. She’s not here for you,” Epstein told his friend, to which he responded, “Oh, I thought she was 16,” according to Farmer. The artist told the New York Times that she had advised the F.B.I. to investigate Trump’s ties to Epstein.
This story was originally published on July 22, 2025. It was updated on September 9, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to reflect the release of the drawing.
