Donald Trump’s loyalists at the Treasury leaned on the government’s money-printers to draw up a $250 note bearing his face, a new report has revealed.
Behind the scheme are two of the president’s political appointees, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. They are U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, who once served in Georgia’s state senate and pushed Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and Beach’s senior adviser, Mike Brown.
Last year, the pair repeatedly pushed staff at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) to knock up Trump banknote prototypes, four of the agency’s employees told the Post—despite a law that only allows “deceased individuals” to appear on cash.
Beach went so far as to hand bureau staff mock-up designs in August and September, one parking Trump’s face dead center on the note, the Post reported.
The artist behind it, British painter Iain Alexander, said he had run the design past Trump, 79, himself. “He likes to call me his favorite British artist,” Alexander told the newspaper.
Alexander also revealed he has pitched a “women’s liberation” theme for the note’s reverse, fronted by Revolutionary War flagmaker Betsy Ross—an idea he says Trump enthusiastically backed.
A $250 note was chosen to coincide with this year’s celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
But the idea didn’t land well with everyone. Bureau director Patricia “Patty” Solimene—who spent 24 years in the Army before becoming the first woman to run the agency—warned the appointees that the note wasn’t authorized and could take years to produce, insiders told the Post. On April 27, she was abruptly reassigned to a new job at the Treasury Department.
In a farewell email seen by the Post, Solimene said the reassignment was not her decision, signing off with a pointed “The buck stopped here.” Brown—who once chaired the Kansas Republican Party and only landed at the Treasury Department in October—has since been handed her old role.
Trump is already creeping onto U.S. cash by other means. Solimene’s team agreed to print $100 bills bearing his signature—a first for any sitting president—and the Post reports that they are now rolling off the presses in downtown Washington, D.C. The Treasury said Secretary Scott Bessent, 63, signed off on the $100 notes to recognize the country’s “historic achievements.”
Experts say the $250 note itself is going nowhere without Congress. Lawmakers floated a bill last year to let Trump grace a $250 note in time for the country’s 250th birthday, but it has not gone through.
Former bureau director Larry Felix told the Post that such a bill “is not statutorily authorized” and noted that the last $100 redesign took more than 10 years to complete.
A Treasury Department spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the BEP is only conducting “appropriate planning and due diligence” on a $250 note in response to the active legislation, and would move to produce the commemorative bill if it becomes law—insisting Beach never asked staff to print it before Congress passes anything.
The department also stressed that no taxpayer money funded the signature change, which it calls a routine update with a new administration, and that under 12 U.S.C. § 418 the Treasury secretary has full discretion over the design of Federal Reserve notes.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The currency push is the latest in Trump’s vanity blitz that has seen the State Department announce it will stamp his face on passports. And the Daily Beast reported in December how his headshot was slapped onto the main national parks pass, bumping a prize-winning photo of Glacier National Park, and sparking a lawsuit to prevent it.
