‘It’s Disgusting!’ CNN’s Jake Tapper Stunned by Epstein Survivor’s Revelation About Bombshell ‘Birthday Book’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper was disgusted and stunned when Epstein survivor Jess Michaels connected a drawing from the Jeffrey Epstein 50th birthday book to a real-life incident when she was being “trained” and groomed for abuse.

The now-infamous “Birthday Book” note that President Donald Trump sued the Wall Street Journal over was released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday — along with hundreds of pages from the rest of the book.

In addition to the Trump note — which he denies writing — the book includes many other disturbing and cryptic messages.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper asked Michaels about the “triggering” effects of the coverage, and Ms. Michaels brought up one of those messages — a crude and shocking cartoon.

Tapper described the drawing, and Michaels revealed the real-life trauma it mirrored and evoked — a “joke” Epstein made to her in 1991:

JAKE TAPPER: I want to warn people, I want to warn our viewers. This is disgusting, but it is important. This is from Epstein’s birthday book. It’s on the air right now. On the left it appears to show Jeffrey Epstein and it says 1983, giving balloons to three little girls. And on the right it says 2003. And it’s Epstein with. Presumably these girls are now older and they’re giving Epstein a massage. One of them looks to be in the middle of a sex act.

We do not know who’s responsible for this disgusting drawing at all. There are no names attached to it. We’re not alleging that anybody drew it in particular, but obviously it suggests people knew. This is 2003, this birthday book, before Epstein was first arrested for anything, which I think is 2004, 2005.

This suggests people knew. They knew he was grooming. They knew he was trafficking. Jess, your response. Now, I’m sorry for interrupting, but I just wanted to make sure everybody knew what you were talking about.

JESS MICHAELS: Thank you. Thank you for updating everybody on that. So the reason this was so triggering for me is because I’m a 1991 Jeffrey Epstein survivor. I’m one of the earliest publicly known survivors. There are survivors that are earlier. They’re not public that I know of.

And in 1991, there was something that he did when I was there initially training me to do massage, as he had trained a very dear friend who trusted him, spoke highly of him and directed me to him.

And during that time where he was training me and we were talking about massage, at one point, it devolves into sexual jokes, and one of the jokes started with that in other countries, you know, it can be a little different. You don’t just have one masseuse, you have three. You have one at your head, one at your feet, and one in the middle. Hahaha.

And when I saw that picture, and like I said, I haven’t had many triggers happen. I’ve worked so hard on my own healing and taking responsibility for that. All that put me right back there to what happened next. But I think there’s something really important about it. And you started saying that joke he told in 1991 shows a pattern of behavior, that’s clearly depicted in that cartoon.

I mean, I think you see it too, Jake, right? Like, you see that joke that he said in 1991 is right in that cartoon.

TAPPER: It’s disgusting!

MICHAELS: Everyone around Jeff, it’s disgusting! Everyone around Jeffrey Epstein thought this was funny, thought this was something to celebrate, thought this was acceptable.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.