House Oversight Committee Democrats dropped another grenade into the Epstein saga on Monday, releasing a redacted photo that appears in Jeffrey Epstein’s 2003 birthday book, and it is every bit as grotesque as it sounds. The image shows Epstein at Mar-a-Lago holding a jumbo novelty check bearing “DJTRUMP,” alongside a caption joking that he “sold” a “fully depreciated” woman to Donald Trump for $22,500. The woman’s identity is redacted.
Democrats posted the image as part of a tranche of estate documents they say they obtained via subpoena, and they highlighted the “depreciated” gag in a social post that set political feeds on fire. The committee’s push follows their publication of a separate page from the same leather-bound scrapbook, the now infamous birthday note allegedly bearing Trump’s signature and a sexually suggestive sketch. Trump has blasted that page as a fake, and his allies insist the signature is not his.
Jeffrey Epstein sold a “fully depreciated” woman to Donald Trump.
She had “early people skills”. pic.twitter.com/4vDlUxCZKy
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) September 8, 2025
The crude “check” image reads like a frat-house in-joke, but context makes it more loaded. The 238-page book, compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday, mixes childhood photos, fawning notes from friends, and explicit, juvenile riffs on his persona.
One handwritten line accompanying the check says Epstein was “showing early talents with money + women,” before claiming he “sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” Democrats argue these pages show how Epstein and his circle talked about women as commodities, and they want the full, unredacted files released.
For Trumpworld, the timing is brutal. The White House has been swatting down coverage of the birthday book for days, calling the alleged Trump note a hoax and a “dead issue.” Conservative influencers piled on, claiming media outlets are laundering forgeries. But the document drip keeps coming, and each new page revives the central question Democrats are pressing: what, exactly, did Trump know about Epstein and when, and how close were they during those 1990s and early-2000s Palm Beach years.
🚨 MAJOR UPDATE: From the Epstein files: A novelty check for $22,500 with a handwritten note implying Trump “sold” Epstein a woman—captioned “fully depreciated.”
This isn’t satire. It was recovered from Epstein’s estate.
How is this not the top story in every newsroom? pic.twitter.com/gINfW6xsaa
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) September 8, 2025
The latest photo also includes a longtime Mar-a-Lago member pictured with Epstein, according to reporting, a detail that shows how the financier moved inside elite social circles tied to Trump’s club. The woman in the image, according to her attorney, denied romantic involvement with either man and said she severed ties with Epstein in the 1990s. That pushback has not slowed the online frenzy, where the “depreciation” bit has become a shorthand for the book’s casually dehumanizing tone.
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accuse Democrats of cherry-picking pages to smear the president and politicize material the estate handed over under subpoena. Democrats counter that selective releases are necessary to protect potential victims’ identities and to avoid publishing nudity or personal data, which is why many faces are blurred and names redacted. The estate itself told the panel it is not aware of a so-called “client list,” a claim that has further inflamed skeptics on the right and left who want everything opened.
The novelty check is not proof of a crime, but it is a window into a grotesque, boys’-club mindset that treated women like line items on a ledger. With Democrats vowing to keep releasing what they can, and Trump’s team labeling the whole thing a smear, the fight over the Epstein files is nowhere near finished.
Expect more pages, more redactions, more denials, and, if the last 24 hours are any guide, more jaw-dropping artifacts from a world that preferred to keep its “jokes” private.
