MAGA Congressman Explains Trump’s Signature in Epstein Birthday Book by Floating Autopen Conspiracy

A Congressional document dump of Jeffrey Epstein files on Monday has created a certifiable public relations nightmare for the Trump administration, and its allies are currently scrambling for some sort of explanation as to why what looks a whole helluva lot like the President’s signature would be found on an alleged birthday letter included in the trove. On Tuesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) offered up the latest excuse: some sort of conspiracy involving a signing machine called an autopen.

“We’ve seen autopen’s been used quite a bit by the Biden administration,” Burchett told CNN reporter Manu Raju, during a press conference. “I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist either.”

“There’s a history of it,” Raju countered, referencing the history of Trump’s doodles that have since been shared across the internet.

“I just don’t buy it,” Burchett responded.

“You think someone may have just forged this?” the reporter asked.

“Yeah, somehow,” Burchett said. “It’s so easy to do.”

In earlier times, Republicans notably promoted conspiracy theories that President Biden was so demented by old age that his aides had used an autopen to sign off on important documents while he was in office. Therefore, anything he signed must be considered invalid, the theory goes.

Biden has acknowledged using autopen—just as many other presidents before him (including Obama) have done. In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld faced criticism for having used an autopen to sign condolence letters to soldiers who had been killed in the Iraq War. Now the autopen topic has proven useful again, apparently to preclude Trump from any sort of creepy association with the world’s most notorious sex criminal.

On Monday, the House Oversight Committee on Government Reform released a new bundle of documents related to dead billionaire sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. The bundle of docs is easily one of the creepiest, most disturbing things ever publicly released by a government committee and reads like something straight out of True Detective. The internet subsequently lost its mind.

The documents are said to be from a “birthday book” that was given to Epstein on his 50th birthday by friends and colleagues. The “book,” which is 238 pages long, includes a broad variety of bizarre letters, drawings, and photographs. It includes personal details from different periods of the dead financier’s life—including pictures of Epstein as a child, and records from his employment as a high school teacher.

Bizarrely interspersed throughout much of it are images of sheet music for the song “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” the lyrics for which resound with particular creepiness given everything that has happened since Epstein’s 50th birthday. There is also a section that appears to be labeled “Children” and includes a creepy-ass child’s drawing that includes frowning and weeping kids and some sort of scrawled writing about a bride and groom.

Much of the creepy imagery included in the “book” has been discussed at length online (including a hand-drawn picture of Epstein giving balloons to little girls), but, in terms of political drama, the most controversial inclusion is a very bizarre letter that President Trump has been accused of giving to Epstein.

The letter, which has previously been reported on, has been disavowed by Trump and the White House as a fake and a “hoax.” However, onlookers have noted that the drawing looks like doodles that were previously attributed to Trump, and the signature also looks like Trump’s signature. The documents are said to come from Epstein’s estate, although very little information about them has been released to contextualize the documents or to prove their authenticity.

For the White House, the Epstein story has proven to be an unassailable controversy, and the administration and its allies have twisted themselves in knots to try to find a consistent and convincing narrative.

During his presidential campaign, Trump suggested he would release the Epstein docs and, once in office, his Justice Department orchestrated a publicity stunt—dubbed the “binder incident”—in which it released old Epstein documents in flashy binders to select MAGA influencers. The fallout from the non-disclosure spurred further controversy and made the administration look like it was trying to hide something. Not long afterward, Trump attempted to personally kill the controversy, saying during a press conference: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?… Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?”

Then the Wall Street Journal published the first known evidence of the “birthday book,” including a written description of the racy doodle that Trump has been accused of drawing. In a hilariously floundering denial, Trump apparently called the newspaper and said the following: “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he told the outlet. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” the president of the United States said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.” He added, “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.” Not long afterward, Trump sued the Journal along with Rupert Murdoch, who owns the newspaper.

As the story has failed to abate, other excuses have been provided. Noted Trump ally and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson recently made the bizarre claim that Trump previously worked as an “FBI informant” to try to “take down” Epstein’s operation. The internet subsequently had a field day with Johnson’s claim. Some noted that, to become an informant, you typically have to be caught doing something illegal. Others pointed out that the Trump administration had already referred to the Epstein story as a “hoax,” so why was Trump investigating a “hoax”? When subsequently pressed by reporters about his previous statements, Johnson seemed to walk them back, saying: “I don’t know if I used the right word,” he said. “I said FBI informant. I’m not sure — I wasn’t there. This isn’t my lane. I’m just repeating what is common knowledge and has been out in the public for a long time: President Trump was never a hindrance to the Epstein investigation. He was trying to assist in that.”

For the record, it doesn’t appear to be common knowledge that Trump was “trying to assist” the FBI in investigating Epstein’s activities. Johnson appears to have been referring to claims made by a lawyerfor some of Epstein’s victims who previously said that Trump was helpful during the initial probe into Epstein’s affairs back in 2009. That lawyer has since criticized the president’s about-face on the issue, noting that Trump “did not think that it was a hoax [back in 2009] and was trying to help.”

As the story has continued to make the rounds over the past day, the Trump administration has continued to try to distract from it. On Tuesday, Trump refused to comment further on the documents, calling the story a “dead issue.”