Transcript of Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th Birthday Book

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. For months, President Trump has tried to dismiss questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, notably denying that he'd authored a lewd birthday message to the convicted sex offender. On Monday, Congress released the message, and many more like it. Today, My colleague David Enrich explains how the book and an investigation into Epstein's finances reveal how Epstein leveraged his rich and powerful friends to fund a years-long criminal conspiracy. It's Wednesday, September 10th. David, on Monday, we saw firsthand the release of this now very infamous birthday book to Jeffrey Epstein. It's for his 50th birthday. It's from 2003. It's filled with notes from a lot of well-known, some rich, some powerful people, many of whom wrote sexually explicit messages. There's one note in particular that by now a lot of us have heard about or seen that seems to be from President Trump. It seems to be alluding to some secret that Trump and Epstein have. Beyond, though, being in some cases, lude or sexually suggestive, I'm just wondering what we should be making from this book overall.

Yeah. To back up for a second, one of the enduring mysteries of Jeffrey Epstein is who surrounded him, why they were surrounding him and what they were doing around him. We've known for a long time that there was a whole band of very rich, very powerful people who spent a lot of time and money with Epstein. What most of those people have said is that they did not have any indication about what Epstein was up to, and they've really downplayed the extent of their relationships. But on Monday, because of a bipartisan and fairly belated effort by Congress to really dig in to what's been going on with Epstein, we finally got this birthday book that has been talked about for months now. What this 238-page book reveals is that, first of all, there were a ton of rich, powerful, and famous people in orbit, including people like Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. It also shows that a lot of the people in the book clearly had some level of awareness that Epstein was compulsively pursuing young women, because over and over again in the pages of this book, we see direct and indirect references to that.

Let's go over some examples of actually what's in the book. I think to do that, it would be helpful actually if you could read some examples of some of these notes that people left.

The right place to start is this letter or note that apparently was sent by Donald Trump. It looks like a script or something that is written in type over the rough outlines of a naked woman. It starts by saying, voiceover. There must be more to life than having everything. Then it goes into this imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein. It says, Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes, we do, come to think of it. It wraps up with Trump referring to enigmas and then says, A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret. Then Trump signs his name in his distinctive squiggly, Sharpy signature where the woman's pubic hair would be.

Obviously, we should note here that the White House has first denied that this note even existed, and now they're denying that it is, in fact, Trump's signature.

Yeah, that's right. Although I've got to say it either is is a very effective forgery or it is Trump's signature. We and others have found other signatures that Trump made around that same time, and this appears to be virtually an identical match.

Okay, so obviously, I don't know why that drawing and that inscription does not prove that Trump knew that Epstein was having sex with underage girls, but it does raise a lot of questions about what on earth their relationship was and what Donald Trump did know about his proclivities. I mean, what do you make of that?

Look, there's no question that Epstein and Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s were close and were traveling in very similar circles. There are a lot of pictures of the two of them together during that time period. We and others have reported on an incident in which a woman said that Trump sexually assaulted her in Epstein's presence, and at least one young woman was lored into his sex trafficking network after being recruited by his associate, Galaine Maxwell, at Mar-a-Lago. Oh, really? The relationship between these two goes back years and years. I think Trump has said that he cut ties with Epstein before Epstein was initially criminally charged. One of the big takeaways from this birthday book, Finally Being Public, is that it really makes it much harder for Trump to argue, as he had, that this letter doesn't exist or is a complete lie. We can now all see with our own eyes what is in this letter and what very clearly appears to be Trump's signature.

All of this is relevant, we should be clear, because there is this huge and growing question about Trump's association with Epstein. Among his base, a lot of President Trump supporters seem to have turned on him over this issue. It feels like this is the one issue that has really caused a split within MAGA, and it's one of the reasons why there's such urgency behind answering questions about what these two men's relationship was to begin with.

Yeah, I think that's fair. The backlash on the right is not because MAGA folks are upset about Trump's relationship with Epstein, so much as it is that the Trump administration has backpedaled furiously on their pledges during the campaign to provide full transparency about the Epstein investigation. Trump has gone from being supportive of that to being the single leading obstacle to full transparency. I think my best guess, based on the reporting that my colleagues and I have done over the past few months, is that a big part of that is that in the files that various investigators have and that Epstein's estate has, there are repeated references to Donald Trump, given his years long close association with Epstein. The birthday book and Trump's apparent message in the birthday book is just one very clear indication of that.

Right. It's one thing for him to campaign on, Release the files, release the files, Jeffrey Epstein. We need to know everything about Jeffrey Epstein. What seems clear now is that the book at least suggests that one reason why Trump might not want to actually release all information relating to Jeffrey Epstein, is that he's in there in some capacity. Even if it's not implicating him in a crime, it's at the very least embarrassing in a way that he does not want to feed.

I think that's right. What's more is that this is emblematic of the broader issue with transparency here. I mean, Trump does not want to release all the investigative files related to Epstein, apparently because he is concerned that he will be embarrassed by some of what's in there. The birthday book is a microcosm of that Because in addition to the letter from Trump, there are a lot of other letters and materials from other rich and powerful people that in some ways are even more revealing.

Could you give us a couple of other examples from the book? What did other people say? Who were they? What gave you that impression?

Well, I'm just flipping through this right now on my computer, and I'm looking at one page in the book where someone submitted a bunch of photos that they had taken on a recent trip to Africa that shows all manner of wild animals with erect penises or engaging in sex. Those photos are from a very prominent person in Silicon Valley. Look, the book is filled with other examples like that, where you have bold-face household names singing Epstein's praises. One of those people is Bill Clinton, who doesn't have any innuendo that we can see about sex or anything like that, but refers in a very positive way to Epstein's childlike curiosity. You've also got Leon Black, the private equity billionaire, who refers to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and notes that Epstein is catching not fish, but women, whom he refers to as blondes, redheads, and burnets. You have Les Wexner, the founder of the Limited and Victoria's Secret, who is another of Epstein's longtime benefactors, who says that, I wanted to get you what you want, so here it is, and then has a sketch of a pair of breasts. Then you have a strange one from a guy named Joel Pashkow, who is a longtime member of Mar-a-Lago.

It shows what appears to be a doctored picture of Paschou, Jeffrey Epstein, and a couple of other unidentified people, including what appears to be a young woman. They're holding up this novelty check for something like $22,000 that is fake signed by Donald Trump. It refers to Epstein having early talents with money and women and claims that the photo shows Epstein selling a fully depreciated woman to Trump. Again, it's important to note here that there's no indication that Trump was in on this joke or part of it. But it shows, once again, that the worlds of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump often collided and overlapped in those days in the early 2000s and late 1990s.

I also just want to point out that when I have been asked to, for example, sign some congratulatory book, it's not like I'm seeing what other people are writing. I'm just writing my own entry or sending something via email to be included in like, Happy 50th anniversary, or whatever. It's not like when you do those things, you typically see what other people are submitting. It's not like something's being emailed around. It feels worth noting that all of these people who presumably are not seeing what each other is submitting are sending stuff that is, at the very least, thematically connected. They're all saying the same thing, which is this wink and a nod toward Jeffrey Epstein's sexual proclivities.

Yeah, that's exactly right. What we can see really clearly here is that it was totally out in the open that Epstein was obsessed with young women. They are not talking about this in a pejorative way. They're describing this in a laughing, charming way that they think is really adorable. What's also clear in looking at this 238-page book is that he was not just pursuing women and girls. He was also pursuing power and wealth. A lot of the people he surrounded himself with were very wealthy and very powerful, and they enabled him to build connections and networks that ended up fueling his criminal enterprise.

We'll be right back. David, before the break, you said that Epstein's network basically enabled him in a way that powered his criminal enterprise. What exactly did you mean by that?

Well, Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation required a lot of things. One of the most important things was money so that he could procure young women and girls really from all over the world. Epstein was very good at leveraging the personal connections that he had built up over the years, including with many prominent people in the business community, to be able to move his money all over the world. As my colleagues and I have been trying to understand the flow of those finances over the past six years, the name that keeps coming up over and over again is his longtime bank, J. P. Morgan. The relationship between Epstein and J. P. Morgan started in the late 1990s. Epstein at the time was a money manager who was sitting on a tremendous amount of wealth, something in the neighborhood of $300 million, we think. He advised some very rich people, including Les Wexner, who we spoke about earlier, He's the founder of the Limited and Victoria's Secret, who drew the pair of breasts in Epstein's 50th birthday book. And so Epstein arrives at J. P. Morgan, and very soon, he becomes a really lucrative client. He's generating millions of dollars in fees for the bank Bank.

And just as important, he is introducing bank executives to a whole roster of wealthy people that the bank can try to convert into clients. And one of the big names there in 2003 is Serge Brin, the co founder of Google, who starts to move what would become $4 billion of assets into J. P. Morgan.

I would imagine that J. P. Morgan was quite grateful for that an introduction. I mean, there's very few people on planet Earth that could bring $4 billion into a bank, obviously.

Yeah. It is not a surprise that Epstein quickly becomes one of the most prized clients at J. P. Morgan because of his ability to bring in people like Serguey Brin. The most important person at J. P. Morgan in terms of fostering this very lucrative relationship with Epstein is an executive named Jess Staley. And Epstein helps vault his career up to a new plane. Staley, at the time, is an up and coming executive, and he really hitches his wagon to Epstein, who in 2004, helps orchestrate this acquisition in which J. P. Morgan and Staley buy this prominent hedge fund. And it was a transaction that was transformative for J. P. Morgan, But even more so, it was transformative for Jess Staley.

Okay, so basically, if I'm understanding you right, not only is Jeffrey Epstein making money for J. P. Morgan, but he's also enriching this one executive by bringing in his rich and powerful friends. Basically, these two men's fortunes are becoming more and more intertwined.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Epstein is getting out of this quite a bit of value. He gets the legitimacy and credibility of being affiliated in a close way with one of the world's largest and most prestigious banks. He is getting this whole suite of banking services from J. P. Morgan. He's getting loans. He's getting wire transfers. He's even getting J. P. Morgan to open accounts for some of his associates, including some who turn out to be Epstein's victims and whom the bank didn't even meet before agreeing to create accounts for them. He's also, with Jess Staley, building a relationship that for years will protect him when people at the bank start getting concerned about how Jeffrey Epstein is using his money and the role that the bank is playing in his enterprise.

When you say concerned, what do you mean by that? What is he doing that raises concerns?

There are a lot of things Epstein was doing that raise red flags within the bank. One of the biggest is that he was, on a very regular basis, withdrawing huge sums of money from the bank in cash. That is typically a warning sign of potential illicit activity because criminal enterprises tend to be financed by cash, not by things that leave a paper trail. He was also wiring money all over the world. Anti-money laundering experts and compliance officers, as well as some really high-ranking executives within the bank, saw a lot of these transactions and became really concerned pretty early on that what Epstein was doing deserved greater scrutiny, and in some cases, they even argued that he should be kicked out of the bank as a client. This was ultimately, though, a dead end because executives like Jess Staley repeatedly went to bat for him and overrode those concerns, voiced by people elsewhere in the organization. This was happening not just when it came to people's concerns about the transactions and the activity they were seeing within the bank. It also happened when starting in 2006 and going on through 2008, Epstein was indicted, arrested, and ultimately pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor and went to jail and registered as a sex offender.

Even then, Jess Staley, among other executives, successfully managed to keep him as a of J. P. Morgan.

Because Staley's career is hugely tied to not just Epstein, but Epstein's network.

Yeah, that's right. There's more to it. Epstein and Staley over the years became quite close personally. For example, when Epstein was incarcerated in Florida in 2008 and 2009, Staley went to visit him. They exchanged a ton of emails. Staley even went and spent time at some of Epstein's properties in various parts of the world, including sometimes when Epstein wasn't even there. On at least on one occasion, Staley had sex with a young woman whom he met in Epstein's townhouse and who later said that Epstein had been sexually abusing her and farmering her out for sex with some of his friends. So this was an extraordinarily close and multifaceted relationship between Epstein, who at this point is a convicted sex criminal and a registered sex offender on the one hand, and one of the highest-ranking executives on Wall Street on the other.

It's amazing that this one executive, Jess Staley, has so much power. He's basically almost single-handedly able to keep him at the bank despite the fact that he is a very public criminal at this point.

I think this speaks to the degree to which J. P. Morgan and his executives were really blinded by greed here. Epstein was helping them in a lot of really important ways, not just making them money directly, but the clients that he was introducing them to. And this continues for years, by the way. We found emails in which Epstein appears to be introducing J. P. Morgan bankers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's trying to foster a relationship between the bank and Bill Gates. Epstein is working as essentially as a middleman for Leon Black, the private equity billionaire who was also a contributor to the birthday book. He's bringing him to the bank as well. There are all these reasons to keep doing business with Epstein.

This relationship goes on for years. How does it actually end? I presume it ends eventually.

Yeah, it does break. This starts in 2012 when the bank CEO, Jamie Dimon, demotes Staley, who by this point is essentially the number two executive at the bank, which then prompts Staley to leave the bank in 2013. And by the way, there is an open question as to how much the bank CEO knew about all of this at the time. He is denied even knowing that Epstein was a client of the bank until much later. But in any case, after Staley leaves the bank in 2013, there is another course of opposition to having Epstein as a client. And with no one left to protect him or defend him, Epstein is kicked out of the bank in 2013. And that brings down the curtain on a relationship that lasted at least 15 years involved more than $1 billion of transactions that J. P. Morgan processed for Epstein, and playing a role that many experts now believe was a crucial part of Epstein's sex trafficking machinery.

Which is what Congress is trying to get to the bottom of, right? Everything we've been discussing about the relationship between Epstein and J. P. Morgan, is illuminating of how on earth he was able to power this enterprise that, as you said, required a ton of cash. So you can see, it seems that the people, the networks that are at least partially illuminated in that birthday are directly tied and intertwined with the financial ingratiation that allows him to get away with what he did for so long.

Yeah, I think that's right. This goes a long way toward answering some of the central questions and mysteries that continue to surround Epstein seen, namely how he was able to finance this criminal enterprise. That is one of the very central questions that lawmakers are now, after years of not really doing anything on this, are now starting to demand answers and demand documents.

It also It's worth noting that this entire story confirms something that feels at least conspiratorial on its face, but now we know to be totally true. There's a powerful network of people and institutions that enable child sex traffic working. People are so dismissive of people who believe in the QAnon conspiracy, and yet here we are talking about all these rich, powerful men who looked the other way while Jeffrey Epstein pursued young women and the bank that financed him.

I think that's That's a very fair point to make, and I think it's a big part of the reason that the Trump administration's efforts to continuously to shrug this off and hope this is going to go away are not likely to succeed. This is not just an issue about Democrats trying to get information that might embarrass the President. This is a really bipartisan initiative at this point, and it's fueled in large part by folks on the right and in the MAGA movement who have long suspected that there is a conspiracy led by rich, powerful people institutions to support Epstein. Here we have evidence that suggests that that's at least partially true. I think the more those suspicions get stoked and confirmed, the more calls and demands that are going to be from across the political spectrum for the Trump administration to provide much more transparency than they already have.

Which is not really what we've seen from Republican lawmakers, right? This great or widespread appetite to go against the President in any way.

Yeah, I agree. This is a pretty unusual moment, and I think it speaks to the broad bipartisan interest in the Epstein scandal and the desire for transparency. We've already seen in recent weeks that the House Oversight Committee with support from both Republicans and Democrats, has issued subpoenas to the Trump administration as well as to the Epstein estate. That's where we got the birthday book from. That was the Epstein estate complying with a congressional subpoena. In the weeks ahead, there is likely to a vote that is being pushed primarily by Democrats, but also by some Republicans that would require the Trump Justice Department to release a whole trove, basically everything they are sitting on related to Epstein. It's likely to be a close vote. I don't know what the outcome will be in the House or in the Senate, but it's very clear that there are going to be continued efforts from Congress to try and force the administration to be much more transparent than it has been so far.

David, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Israel attempted to kill senior members of Hamas in an air strike on Tuesday in Qatar, a sharp escalation of the war in Gaza. Qatar is a US ally and had been acting as a mediator in the conflict. The strike threatened to undermine those negotiations and also risked antagonizing the Qatari government, in part because the country's political and economic stability hinges on its reputation as a haven for business and tourism in a volatile region. And a federal judge late Tuesday temporarily blocked President Trump from removing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, allowing her continue serving as she contests her recent dismissal. The decision follows Mr. Trump's attempts to fire Ms. Cooke over allegations that she falsified documents related to her mortgages and comes amid the President's ongoing pressure campaign on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Today's episode was produced by Alex Stern and Asta Chattervedi. It was edited by M. J. Davis Lynn and Paige Cawet and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Thanks to Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Michael Gold. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams.

See you tomorrow.