Inside Trump's Months-Long Effort to Get His Signature on US Currency

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Carol Massar** (0:08)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:15)
Time for our weekly check in with Jason Leopold, who does so much digging, and we get to reap the fruits of his efforts. The benefits. I love it, I love it. Hey, and this leads us to some newly released documents that offer a glimpse into the months of his long effort to put a sitting president's signature on US currency for the first time and the resulting tension inside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Yeah, let's get to it, because he got his hands on those documents. Jason Leopold, back with us. Bloomberg News Senior Investigative Reporter. He's the author of the FOIA Files newsletter. It comes out each Friday, a new one. You can read it and subscribe on the Bloomberg terminal or by heading to bloomberg.com/newsletters. Jason also hosts the podcast Disclosure. He is also executive producer of the new documentary, The Real Wolf of Wall Street. It premiered in July exclusively on Paramount Plus, and you can check out all those episodes. Hey, hey, hey, you just have like this long list.

**Jason Leopold** (1:12)
By the way, thank you for that. You're welcome. Check will be in the mail.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:16)
Okay, deal.
Now I can go on my vacation. I'll have the check in the mail. Hey, listen, talk to us about this. It is pretty significant that Donald Trump, we're going to see his signature on a US currency. As Emily reminded us, who even uses US currency anymore? But you did some digging. Tell us what you looked into and what you got.

**Jason Leopold** (1:36)
Yeah, and this is part of the extension from the banners to Trump's image on passports. It's trying to get an understanding of how this is all happening and what's taking place behind the scenes. So in March, the Department of Treasury released, they issued a press release saying that Trump's signature would appear on US currency later this year.
And Scott Besson noted that it would be $1 bills. So immediately, I wanted to find out how this happened because this is the first time that a sitting president's signature would appear on US currency. So that's unprecedented. I went back and forth with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for quite some time. They ultimately released a couple of dozen pages of emails to me. And it really revealed that there was, one, some tension around this project, which began last year, say around October, when they were discussing it.
And the treasurer at the time was on board, but they were moving very quickly. They were looking first to add Trump's name to a $10 bill. And the director of Bureau of Engraving and Printing, she seemed to have some hesitancy about all of this. So it's really kind of a fascinating look behind the scenes as to what they were working on and how quickly they were trying to move while also recognizing, at least on the Bureau of Engraving and Printing side, how questionable this was.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:33)
But this is happening now, right? Like, I guess the pushback wasn't successful?

**Jason Leopold** (3:40)
No, in fact, you know, as far as the pushback, I'm hoping to get more documents that may reveal exactly what that looked like. But in May, the director of Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Patricia Solomien, she was abruptly reassigned to another position. No reason why. She ultimately left the agency. She is all over these emails, and she is the one who you could sort of get a sense of, that she was dealing with tension around, you know, in discussions with Treasury related to this.
And then, you know, ultimately, what happens is that they released their press release, and I was unaware of it, but there was a public outcry apparently, enough or big enough that it resulted in people sending emails to the US Mint that BEP, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, thought was perhaps threatening, and they involved the Secret Service, the FBI in this, as well as a police department in Fort Worth, Texas where Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a printing facility. I just thought that this one note or this one line in that email in particular was really interesting and it was from the security manager at BEP. And he says, obviously, there is a sector of the population who are not happy with this decision. Yeah.

**Tim Stenovec** (5:30)
I agree and I can see why you are interested. I got to go back to something in your story that's on the Bloomberg, Jason, that the Treasury Division reacted large portions of the documents. You got 29 pages. You're still waiting on a dozen more that need to be reviewed by the Federal Reserve Board and other Treasury offices.