In Epstein’s ‘Birthday Book,’ a Celebration of His Lecherous Exploits

The book containing 50th birthday tributes to Jeffrey Epstein was released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee.

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One friend compared him to the main character in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” except instead of fish, Jeffrey Epstein caught women, “blonde, red or brunette.”

Another friend described a demeaning sexual encounter that a woman endured in the back of a car that left Mr. Epstein “howling with laughter.”

“So many girls, so little time,” wrote a third associate of Mr. Epstein.

Such tributes are part of the “birthday book,” which was dedicated to Mr. Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003.

The 238-page book, littered with candid photos, drawings and collages, was released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee among the documents turned over by Mr. Epstein’s estate after being subpoenaed by the committee.

It offers a vivid portrait of how Mr. Epstein’s lewd and lecherous behavior with young women was both widely known and widely celebrated by people who described themselves as his closest friends and associates.

Compiled by his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, the book contained everything from a handwritten letter from Mr. Epstein’s mother, to photos of scantily clad young women, to a cartoon drawing of Mr. Epstein lying in a beach chair getting what appears to be a nude massage from four topless women.

After an introduction by Ms. Maxwell, the book opens innocently with Mr. Epstein’s birth certificate and a letter from his mother, who wrote about his bar mitzvah and his being named one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s most eligible bachelors at the age of 27. There are report cards from his grade school and photos from his childhood.

But as the book continues, the submissions become crude and dark, containing numerous references to Mr. Epstein’s sexual conquests and female genitalia.

Most notably, the book contains the now well-publicized poem to Mr. Epstein that bears Donald J. Trump’s name. It is framed by a silhouette drawing of naked women and includes what appears to be Mr. Trump’s signature. Elsewhere there is an oversized check that purports to be Mr. Epstein jokingly selling a “fully depreciated” woman to Mr. Trump for $22,500.

White House officials denied that Mr. Trump created the image of the naked woman.

But in keeping with the overall salacious tenor of the birthday book, that image and letter blend in.

The venture capitalist William Elkus described how Mr. Epstein managed to conjure a beautiful woman out of thin air during a visit to a farm town in Iowa, where it was hard to “tell the difference between the girls and the hogs.” Mr. Elkus mused that Mr. Epstein’s skill in finding a “spectacular tall blonde” whom he later invited back with him to New York suggested he had relied on “some long distance escort service.”

Mr. Elkus, reached by phone on Monday, said it was all meant to be a joke and said his note was a reference to Mr. Epstein's “charisma, which was palpable.”

Another person, named Leslie wrote, “I wanted to get you what you want,” so “here it is.” The brief, scrawled note is accompanied by a drawing of breasts. And another contributor, who said he “agonized long and hard about what to write,” added photos of zebras and lions having sex, adding that the images “seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words.”

Many of the contributions are disturbing. In one letter, a person who signed only “Nick,” recounted an evening in London that left Mr. Epstein “howling with laughter.” That night, the contributor said, an “old man smiling sweetly” pulled down a woman’s panties and put his hand on her privates, only to find another man’s hand already there. Another letter alludes to when Mr. Epstein, in the mid-1970s, first “discovered the Maxwell teen-age daughter.”

Another poem ends noting that somehow at age 50, Mr. Epstein “has avoided the penitentiary.”

By his 55th birthday, Mr. Epstein would plead guilty in Florida to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl after securing a non-prosecution agreement from federal prosecutors. He would then spend nearly 13 months in jail and have to register as a sex offender.

But none of that stopped Mr. Epstein from beginning something of a second act in 2010, and the rich and famous continued to socialize with him — some almost right up until his arrest in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Ms. Maxwell, who compiled the book, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring to sexually traffic minors.

One submission attributed to former President Bill Clinton focused on what he described as Mr. Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” and his “drive to make a difference.”

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton has said the former president was unaware of Mr. Epstein’s crimes.

Other powerful people whose names are attached to tributes or mentioned in the book include the retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, the billionaire investor Leon Black, the attorney Alan Dershowitz and Jean Luc Brunel, a French modeling scout who died in 2022 by suicide in a French jail cell after being charged with raping teenage girls.

There are also letters from women — some of his assistants and girlfriends — who might have also been victims of Mr. Epstein. The names of the women are redacted.

One woman wrote: “With you, dear Jeffrey, I laugh like a little girl and feel like a woman.” The next page in the book simply shows a hand-drawn heart, a brief message and a photo of a woman’s buttocks in a thong bikini.

Another assistant described how Mr. Epstein transformed her life, from a 22-year-old woman who had been divorced and had worked in a hotel restaurant to a person who traveled the world meeting powerful people. Among them, she listed Mr. Trump, Mr. Clinton and “brilliant scientists, lawyers and business men.”

The book closes with a photo of Mr. Epstein lounging in a hammock on what appears to be Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The section ends with a brief note from Ms. Maxwell that reads: “The next fifty years will be even more wonderful.”

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