Eric Trump is fiercely defending his father, President Donald Trump, after the release of a bizarre and graphic sketch allegedly linked to Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious 50th birthday book. The sketch, which came to light in a congressional document dump, has fueled scrutiny over Trump’s past association with the disgraced financier.
The sketch shows a crude drawing of a woman, with the name “Donald” scrawled in a pattern resembling pubic hair. Almost immediately, Trump’s allies rejected the image as an obvious fake. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated the official denial online, calling the drawing “FAKE NEWS.”
Echoing her tone, Eric Trump insisted on Newsmax that the idea that his father created the crude artwork was laughable. “I can tell you my father does not sketch out cartoon drawings,” he told host Carl Higbie on Frontline.
The younger Trump went on to portray the claim as both absurd and politically motivated. “I mean, it’s insane, not to mention Epstein’s lawyer said he asked specifically about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump never once came up, and there is no correlation,” he argued.
Casting his father as someone who saw through Epstein long before the financier’s downfall, Eric added, “It’s ironic given that my father was the very guy that threw him out of the club because he thought he was a s—bag. My father’s intuition was actually incredibly right.”
But the defense has been complicated by past evidence that Trump has drawn sketches on several occasions. Auction house records catalog multiple examples of his pen work, often made with markers and signed with his unmistakable jagged autograph.
His drawing of the Manhattan skyline in 2005, prominently featuring Trump Tower, was put up for charity and later sold for nearly $30,000 at a Los Angeles auction. A similar cityscape sketch titled “You’re Fired” was auctioned in Dallas in 2004.
In 2006, Julien’s Auctions sold his minimalist rendition of the George Washington Bridge for $4,500. Another drawing, this one of the Empire State Building from the early 1990s, was also sold. These archival sales, therefore, stand in contrast to Eric Trump’s claim that such illustrations are not a part of his father’s habits.
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For Donald Trump himself, his own stance has remained consistent when pressed about Epstein. On multiple occasions, including a visit to Scotland in July, he claimed their friendship soured when Epstein began taking advantage of young women who worked at his Mar-a-Lago spa.
“He took people, I say ‘don’t do it anymore,’ you know they work for me… beyond that, he took some others,” Trump recounted. “Once he did that, that was the end of him.”
Trump tried to solidify that narrative during Epstein’s 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges. Asked about their past relationship, he told reporters, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.” He stressed at the time that he had not spoken to Epstein for roughly 15 years, dating back to around 2004.
Congress now has the Jeffrey Epstein birthday book that Donald Trump said doesn’t exist, where he drew a picture and wrote “may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Do you know what this means?
It means that Trump is still covering up the Epstein Files to protect himself. pic.twitter.com/VFmEClpIwi
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) September 8, 2025
Despite his denials, Trump has remained entangled in fallout from the release of the birthday book. After The Wall Street Journal first reported on the n—d figure sketch in July, Trump filed a lawsuit against the outlet, claiming it had knowingly spread false information.
As the Epstein saga refuses to leave Trump, the public accessibility of the drawing has now added further complications to the case. It now remains to be seen how the Trump administration deals with this whole fiasco going forward.
