Jeffrey Epstein’s estate will hand the infamous “birthday book” at the center of President Donald Trump’s defamation case with the Wall Street Journal to Congress, according to the top Democrat on the House committee leading the investigation into the handling of the late sex offender’s case.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California said that Epstein’s estate would comply with the subpoena issued earlier this week by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee and turn over the 2003 book and “other documents.”
“We finally got word from the Epstein Estate, they’re going to be providing the actual Epstein book,” Garcia said Friday on MSNBC. “The Epstein estate is actually going to actually now get us that book and a bunch of other documents that they have that’s actually not been reported yet.”
The birthday book is the subject of a WSJ article concerning an allegedly “bawdy” birthday message from Trump to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, which the president has asserted does not exist. Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch, the paper, its parent company Dow Jones, and the journalists whose bylines appeared on the piece.
The House committee hopes to examine the book of messages from friends and associates, which was a gift to Epstein for his 50th birthday, compiled by his confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump, who denies writing a birthday message to Epstein, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Garcia said the committee would receive the book and other documents on September 8.
“And so that will continue our investigation and again we ask the question, where are the rest of the documents? What is Pam Bondi hiding? What is Donald Trump hiding?” Garcia added.
The congressman also said that some of Epstein’s survivors are coming to Capitol Hill next week to speak with lawmakers about the case.
It comes as the Trump administration continues to grapple with the fallout of the Epstein files. On July 6, the Justice Department issued a memo stating that it had determined the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide behind bars in 2019, while awaiting his sex trafficking trial.
The memo also concluded that Epstein kept no “client list” of rich and powerful people involved in his alleged sex trafficking, and stated no further investigation was warranted.
The Republican-led committee issued a subpoena on August 5 demanding all communications and documents related to the criminal cases of Epstein, and his accomplice Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in federal prison after she was convicted in 2021 for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minors with Epstein.
Garcia previously called out the Justice Department after the tranche of documents it released to the committee contained files that were mostly already in the public domain. The DOJ shared 33,000 pages, 97 percent of which are already public, Garcia said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are expected to testify before Congress on the Trump administration’s handling of the case.
Patel is scheduled to give testimony on September 17, while Bondi is scheduled for October 9, Politico reported.
