By Myrek Zastavnyi
President Donald Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is back in the headlines, after a fresh tranche of documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has pushed a long-simmering contradiction about Donald Trump back into view: the President’s insistence that he doesn’t draw, versus a public record of drawings he’s made — and sold — for years.
In July, an exclusive Wall Street Journal report described in detail a 2003 birthday note for Epstein. While the drawing in question had not been published at the time, an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal described it in detail: a note outlined by a marker drawing of a naked woman, with heavy lines, Trump’s signature strategically placed where her pubic hair would be.
The tension around it reached new heights this week after House Democrats posted images from Epstein’s 2003 “birthday book,” including a bawdy page purporting to bear the President’s signature. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee then released a larger set of the materials, ensuring both parties now own the disclosures. Trump’s team calls the page a fake and says the signature isn’t his.
What’s actually on the page
The scrapbook — a leather-bound, 238-page album compiled for Epstein’s 50th — mixes gags, photos, and lewd in-jokes from friends and associates. The page, allegedly attributed to Trump, shows a marker-drawn outline of a nude female figure with a note ending, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” signed “Donald.” House Democrats posted the image; outlets including PBS and The Guardian have reproduced or summarized the page and the broader book.
The denial — and the inconvenient paper trail
“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” Trump said when the story originally broke. “I never wrote a picture in my life.” The WSJ article even noted that Trump told the paper he would sue if they went ahead with the story. After publication, he filed a libel lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages, and declined new comment this week, calling it a “dead issue.” Yet his public record undercuts the absoluteness of that claim. In the 2000s and again in recent years, Trump sketches — simple cityscapes and landmarks, black or gold marker, signed “Donald Trump” — have been donated for charity and later resold at auction. Reported prices include $15,000 for a city skyline at Sotheby’s (2020), $4,480 for a George Washington Bridge sketch at Julien’s (2019), and nearly $30,000 for a 2005 Manhattan skyline sold via a Los Angeles house; this winter, Sotheby’s cataloged another signed skyline drawing.
Donald Trump Untitled (2005). Photo: courtesy of Nate D. Sanders auctions.
“Trump’s cityscape is a business card blown up,” art critic Jerry Saltz wrote of the Trump drawings in New York magazine. “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.”
Whatever one thinks of the art, the existence of the drawings is not in dispute.
Trump himself 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.”
Why the birthday book matters now
The release has become a Washington Rorschach test. Democrats argue the material belongs in the public record and underscores the need for transparency around Epstein’s network. Republicans, balancing a base that wants disclosures and a White House that dismisses the story, published more documents but have not pledged a Trump-specific probe. The Washington Post described the awkward dance inside the GOP: pressure for transparency colliding with Trump’s denials as the Oversight Committee drip-releases estate files.
Authenticity remains the core dispute. Supporters point to stylistic similarities between the birthday-book signature and Trump’s known autographs — and to his auctioned drawings — as circumstantial reinforcement. Trump allies counter with side-by-side signature comparisons and claim the birthday-book page doesn’t match his penmanship. (Right-wing influencers amplified that argument this week, urging Trump to sue.) No independent forensic finding has been released.
Facts we can anchor to
Images exist: Multiple outlets now host or link to the birthday-book images posted by Congress, including the page attributed to Trump. Review them in context before drawing conclusions.
Drawings exist: Trump’s drawings have sold at recognized auction houses; hammer prices and lots are documented by Artnet, Sotheby’s, and other sale records. Artnet News and Sothebys.com
Positions are clear: The White House says the birthday-book signature is not Trump’s; critics say the visual evidence suggests otherwise. The fight is primarily political and reputational, not (yet) legal.
The bigger picture — credibility, not art criticism
Seen plainly, this is a story less about whether Trump is capable of sketching (he is) and more about credibility under pressure. He denies drawing the birthday-book page; the public record of his drawings doesn’t prove he made this one, but it does flatten the categorical defense that he “never” draws.
If there’s a lesson here, it isn’t about art appraisal — it’s about credibility. Not about whether it’s wise to spend five figures on a crude skyline scrawl — unless, of course, its value lies in the autograph and the story, not the art. By that standard, the birthday-book page is already expensive: not in dollars, but in political cost. Each time Trump repeats “I never draw,” opponents brandish auction catalogs, and every fresh denial keeps the birthday-book page in rotation, widens a small but growing trust gap with persuadable voters, and forces Republicans to answer for it. Even if the page is ultimately deemed inauthentic, the absolutist defense has already backfired; the price being paid isn’t in dollars but in political capital — spent daily as the images and the quotes cycle on.
