Real post shows Vance's response to July report of Trump's alleged birthday note to Epstein

In September 2025, after U.S. lawmakers publicly released a sexually suggestive birthday letter President Donald Trump allegedly wrote to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a rumor spread online that Vice President JD Vance previously denied the note's existence following a July Wall Street Journal report about it.

"This aged nicely," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom on X, alongside a screenshot of a purported post by Vance in which the vice president criticized The Wall Street Journal report. The rumor about Vance's X post also spread on Threads and Reddit. 

Here's what Vance purportedly said, in full (we censored the expletive): 

Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bull****. The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it. Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?

Vance did post the above statement on X (archived) on July 17, 2025, the same day the Journal published its initial report. In other words, screenshots depicting the post by Vance were authentic; they were not the product of digital editing or artificial-intelligence (AI) software. Thus, we rated this claim true. 

(X user @JDVance)

In a reply to his post, Vance said of the WSJ report, "Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story?"

On Sept. 8, 2025, the House Oversight Committee released a trove of documents, including the birthday letter, provided by Epstein's estate in response to a subpoena (see Page 165 for the letter). House Democrats on the committee posted the birthday letter on social media.

As of Sept. 10, 2025, both X posts remained visible on Vance's account under the username @JDVance, which has a gray checkmark denoting that it is "verified because it is a government or multilateral organization account." 

We reached out to Vance to ask if he still stands by the July post. We will update this report when, or if, we receive a response.

The Trump administration has denied his authorship of the letter. For example, in a Sept. 8 X post (archived), White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, "[It's] very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it." That same day, Vance said (archived) on X that Democrats "don't care about Epstein" and his victims and "the only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies."

Here's what we know about the birthday letter.