Maga loyalists push claims that Trump ‘birthday note’ to Epstein is ‘fake’
Several allies of Donald Trump, also prominent Maga figures, have amplified claims that the alleged note written by the president to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday scrapbook is “fake”.
Charlie Kirk, the podcast host and founder of the right-wing non-proft Turning Point USA, said the signature on the note didn’t look like Trump’s “at all”.
Meanwhile, administration officials toed the line. White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on X yesterday that the scanned picture was “FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”
Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who has bragged about having the president’s ear, called the Wall Street Journal’s original reporting on the note “a fake story”.
On Capitol Hill, the president’s allies in congress criticised Democrats on the Hill following the release of the birthday album’s pages, after the House oversight committee subpoenaed Epstein’s estate.
“President Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing and Democrats are ignoring the new information the Committee received today,” congressman James Comer, Republican chair of the committee wrote on social media. “It’s appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today.”
Key events
Trump calls release of suggestive note to Epstein a ‘dead issue’
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump has described as a “dead issue” the release of the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s tome of often highly sexualized 50th birthday messages that includes a suggestive note apparently penned by the president.
The letter, which has been reported before but on Monday was released by Democrats on the House oversight committee after receiving it from the Epstein estate, shows the outline of a woman’s body around an imagined conversation between Epstein and Trump. It is signed “Donald” in between the silhoutte’s legs.
Trump and Epstein were close friends for the better part of 15 years until falling out, allegedly over a real estate deal.
Trump called the letter “fake” and filed a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the existence of the document.
Michigan judge rules that 15 fake electors will not face criminal trial
A state district court judge in Michigan ruled today that 15 “fake electors” will not face a criminal trial for their efforts to overturn and undermine the 2020 election.
The defendants were Republicans who signed documents which said that Donald Trump won the state in 2020, despite Joe Biden’s victory.
Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel charged the electors on several counts of forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. However, Judge Kristen D Simmons said that the group genuinely believed there were problems with the election and were attempting to seek redress. Ultimately, Simmons took issue with the prosecution’s ability to prove intent, and rejected claims that the electors understood their duties well enough.
Photo of novelty check suggests Epstein ‘sold’ Trump a woman for $22,500
Ramon Antonio Vargas
A scrapbook for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday released on Monday contains a photo of him holding a novelty check bearing Donald Trump’s signature, along with a note suggesting Epstein “sold” him a woman for $22,500, shedding further light on the longtime relationship between the president and the convicted sex offender.
The photo shows Epstein and Joel Pashcow, a longtime member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and a third figure, apparently a woman, whose face is redacted in the image, which was shared on social media by Democrats on the House oversight committee. The caption, apparently from Paschow, reads: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redaction] to Donald Trump for $22,500.”
Epstein “showed early ‘people skills’ too”, the caption continued. “Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money on the girl!”
The check is signed “DJ Trump” in a style that differs from most of his signatures at the time.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the woman was someone whom Epstein and the now two-time US president “socialized with” in the 1990s. The woman’s lawyer told the newspaper that she cut ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with either Epstein or Trump, does not know Pashcow, and had no knowledge of the letter, which she called a “disgusting and deeply disturbing hoax”.
Bureau of Labor Statistics says job figures were overestimated by 911,000
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued a revision today, which says that job growth was overestimated between April 2024 and March 2025.
There were actually 911,000 fewer jobs, according to the report. This comes after Donald Trump claimed, baselessly, that job report numbers were being rigged, and fired commissioner Erika McEntarfer. The revision, known as “benchmarking” is a standard, annual process from BLS.
It’s notably not a correction, but an update using more comprehensive data collated throughout the year.
The new figures, however, suggest that the job market might be weaker than expected, and Trump is expected to use today’s revision as fuel for further criticism of the BLS.
Maga loyalists push claims that Trump ‘birthday note’ to Epstein is ‘fake’
Several allies of Donald Trump, also prominent Maga figures, have amplified claims that the alleged note written by the president to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday scrapbook is “fake”.
Charlie Kirk, the podcast host and founder of the right-wing non-proft Turning Point USA, said the signature on the note didn’t look like Trump’s “at all”.
Meanwhile, administration officials toed the line. White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on X yesterday that the scanned picture was “FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”
Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who has bragged about having the president’s ear, called the Wall Street Journal’s original reporting on the note “a fake story”.
On Capitol Hill, the president’s allies in congress criticised Democrats on the Hill following the release of the birthday album’s pages, after the House oversight committee subpoenaed Epstein’s estate.
“President Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing and Democrats are ignoring the new information the Committee received today,” congressman James Comer, Republican chair of the committee wrote on social media. “It’s appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today.”
Sam Levine
Three leading scholars of election law are starting a new project at New York University, focused on studying public confidence in government and political polarization, according to details first shared with the Guardian.
The effort announced on Tuesday, called the Democracy Project, will be led by NYU law professors Richard Pildes, Samuel Issacharoff, and Bob Bauer (Bauer served as Joe Biden’s personal attorney and Barack Obama’s White House counsel). It will bring together experts with a wide range of ideological and political backgrounds to discuss what reforms could look like.
“Dissatisfaction with democratic government has been pervasive for the last decade throughout the West. Our aim in launching the Democracy Project is to analyze the sources of this phenomenon along many dimensions and across national boundaries, as well as identify the most promising ways to meet this challenge,” Pildes, Issacharoff, and Bauer said in a joint statement.
The effort comes as vast numbers of Americans are concerned about the state of democracy. A June NPR/Marist poll found that 76% of Americans felt democracy was under serious threat. Seventy-three per cent of Americans also see politically motivated violence as a major problem.
The project is launching with an essay series on democracy issues that will launch daily over the next 100 days. Those set to contribute to the series include former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, former Montana governor Steve Bullock, former Justice on UK supreme court Lord Jonathan Sumption, former South Africa supreme court Justice Catherine O’Regan, and businessman Mark Cuban.
Justice department considering handing over voter roll data to homeland security – report
The Department of Justice is in talks with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), housed within the Department of Homeland Security, about transferring the sensitive voter roll data it has collected from states for use in criminal and immigration-related investigations, according to a report from Reuters.
The voter registration data was gathered over the last several months by the DoJ’s civil rights division, which has sent requests for voter registration-related information to at least 24 states, per Reuters.
The report cites government records, which show that HSI plans to run the voter roll data against other information in its law enforcement databases for use in criminal and immigration investigations. Legal experts who spoke with Reuters said sharing such data raises privacy concerns.
Donald Trump has routinely claimed, without evidence, that there is large scale fraud within the US election system, and swathes of non-citizens are casting votes.
My colleague, Oliver Holmes, has been going through the Jeffrey Epstein 50th birthday album that House Democrats on the oversight committee released on Monday, after they subpoenaed Epstein’s estate.
As Oliver notes, much of the book seems to be a collection of flattering and celebratory letters – often highly sexualised – from people who knew Epstein. They include photos of him embracing women in bikinis whose faces were redacted, and others showing scenes featuring wild animals having sex.
Some of the key takeaways from the scrapbook, compiled by longtime accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, include:
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Bill Clinton, who had left the US presidency a couple years before the publication of the book, is listed in the “friends” section.
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Peter Mandelson, the current UK ambassador to the United States, called Epstein his “best pal”. There are also photographs in the book which show Mandelson in shorts gazing from a balcony and in a white dressing gown laughing with Epstein.
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One of the most striking images in the collection is a drawing of Epstein handing young girls balloons and a lollipop in 1983, alongside another drawing of him 20 years later, receiving a massage from topless women in 2003.
Read more in Oliver’s full report below:
Attorney general touts more than 2,100 arrests in DC
Attorney general Pam Bondi said that there had been 2,177 arrests in DC since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital that began on 7 August.
She also said that 222 illegal firearms had been seized.
We’ll hear from Donald Trump at 4.30pm ET today, when he signs a proclamation in the Oval Office. The press will be permitted, and we can expect a series of questions: from fallout over his alleged Epstein “birthday book” contribution, to the ramping up of immigration enforcement in Chicago.
Before that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a briefing at 1pm ET, where reporters will get an opportunity to question the administration. We’ll bring you the latest as it happens.
US supreme court ‘effectively legalized racial profiling’, immigration experts warn
Lauren Gambino
Immigration advocates warned that the supreme court has “effectively legalized racial profiling”, granting federal agents the power to stop people in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish or appearing Latino – and opening the door, they say, to a broader unraveling of civil rights protections nationwide.
In a 6–3 decision on Monday, the court’s conservative majority lifted restrictions on “roving” immigration patrols across the LA area after a lower court found that federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people on the basis of race, language, employment or location.
The high court’s ruling alarmed civil liberties advocates and rattled immigrant communities in a county where one in three residents is foreign-born, and where the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement has already seen armed and masked federal agents detain residents, including US citizens, near bus stops, construction sites, churches and other public spaces with little explanation or due process.
At a news conference near a Home Depot in a heavily Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, where raids in June sparked massive protests, the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, assailed the decision, saying the supreme court “has now given the green light for law enforcement to profile and detain Angelenos based on their race”.
Bass quoted from the forceful dissent issued by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the court, who warned: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“I agree with her – I dissent,” Bass said. “We all dissent because from the beginning, we have known that Los Angeles has been used as a test case for total dominance and unchecked power by the federal government.”
Texas state representative James Talarico, a Democrat and former schoolteacher with a rising national profile, joined a widening race for the US Senate on Tuesday that already has two prominent challengers trying to unseat Republican senator John Cornyn.
Talarico, 36, has gained popularity in the Texas House through viral social media posts challenging Republican-led policies such as private school vouchers and requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms, AP reports. It is the first statewide race for Talarico, who flipped a seat in Austin’s booming suburbs in 2018.
He will seek the Democratic nomination in a field that includes former US representative Colin Allred, who is running again after unsuccessfully challenging Republican senator Ted Cruz last year.
“I get the sense that there is a deep hunger across the political spectrum for a fundamentally different kind of politics,” Talarico said in an interview ahead of his announcement. “It’s been 10 years now of Trumpian politics, politics as a blood sport … and there is a hunger 10 years later for a return to more timeless values of sincerity and honesty and compassion and respect.”
Talarico, who has degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University, is working on a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and said he hopes to one day lead the church he grew up in.
Boston mayor Michelle Wu, the city’s first Asian and female leader, is expected to take a critical step to securing a second term when voters on Tuesday narrow the field to the top two candidates.
The expectation is that Wu will face against nonprofit leader Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, AP reports. Two other candidates, Robert Cappucci and Domingos DaRosa, are also running. Cappucci is a military veteran and former district school committee member while DaRosa is a community activist.
For months, Wu has maintained a double-digit lead over Kraft, despite him spending millions of dollars of his own money on his campaign. Wu has been bolstered in part by her defense of the city against attacks from the Trump administration. Both are Democrats, and the party has occupied City Hall for the past century, though the position is nonpartisan.
Members of president Donald Trump’s administration have accused the city of not doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration and threatened a surge in arrests.
Boston is commonly known as a sanctuary city, which limits cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Wu has repeatedly said she wants it to be a welcoming place for immigrants.
Court rejects Trump’s attempt to overturn E Jean Carroll’s $83m verdict
Sam Levine
Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation.
Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned. A three-judge panel for the US court of appeals for the second circuit, rejected that argument.
“The jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case,” the judges wrote in their unanimous opinion. The panel consisted of judges Denny Chin, an appointee of Barack Obama, as well as Sarah AL Merriam and Maria Araújo Kahn, both appointees of Joe Biden. Their decision was unanimous.
At an earlier stage in the case, they also concluded Trump had waived his right to argue presidential immunity because he had not raised it earlier.
“We conclude that Trump has failed to identify any grounds that would warrant reconsidering our prior holding on presidential immunity,” the panel wrote. “A case involving the criminal prosecution of a former President, did not alter the prevailing law on whether presidential immunity can be waived.” Justin Smith, a lawyer for Trump, had argued that presidential immunity is “not waivable”, according to Politico.
Neither the White House nor Trump’s personal lawyers in the case immediately responded to requests for comment. The second circuit on 13 June upheld Carroll’s separate $5m jury verdict against Trump in May 2023 for a similar defamation and for sexual assault.
Jamie Grierson
Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said.
King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.
A round-the-clock policing operation will be in place in the Berkshire town during the event, with a temporary order restricting the airspace from 16 September – when the state visit rehearsal is to take place – until 18 September.
This means non-police drones and smaller aircraft cannot fly through the protected area, Thames Valley police officers said on Monday during a drone-flying demonstration at the force’s training centre in Sulhamstead, Berkshire.
The Stop Trump Coalition is to stage a mass demonstration in central London on the first day of the trip, with a further protest planned near Windsor Castle.
US immigration officers ramp up sweeps in LA after raid restrictions are lifted
Johana Bhuiyan
US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.
In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen. He also said that border patrol would be starting operations back up again today.
“We are going hard in Los Angeles today and are hitting a location as I write this,” Bovino wrote.
Immigration officers were forced to pause their sweeping immigration raids after advocacy groups sued the Trump administration for systemically racially profiling brown-skinned people. US district judge in Los Angeles Maame E Frimpong granted the groups a temporary restraining order after finding a “mountain of evidence” that the immigration enforcement tactics were violating the constitution.
But the supreme court ruled 6-3 to lift those restrictions on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to approve the stay on the order, wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States”. While “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” it can be used as a “relevant” factor, he wrote.
House committee releases image of ‘sickening’ Trump birthday note to Epstein
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that House Democrats on Monday released an image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump, the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.
The letter, described as “sickening” by one representative, was turned over by lawyers for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena from the House oversight committee, and was included in a set of notes sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday.
The image showed a letter that in effect comported with a description in the Journal’s report from July. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below.
“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, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”
The White House did not immediately comment on the letter, but officials sought to discredit the note. Deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, suggested in an X post carrying a different version of Trump’s signature that the letter or the signature had been falsified.
“Time for news corp to open that check book, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote, referencing the defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Journal, over its original story.
Maryland representative Jamie Raskin called the letter “sickening” and called for the full Epstein files to be released. Posting on X, he said:
House Democrats fought to bring this sickening letter into the light while Trump and MAGA mouthpieces assured us it did not exist. Trump even sued the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it!
We can’t trust a word MAGA says. Release the full Epstein file NOW!
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job. In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen.
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Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said. King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.
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Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week. On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.
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Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation. Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned.
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The US supreme court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.
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Intent on vindication after spending four months in prison last year, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asked a federal appeals court on Sunday night to force the justice department to explain why it would not defend his 2022 conviction for defying a January 6 committee subpoena.
