Brandon Beach pushed $250 Bill prototypes with Trump’s face
Brandon Beach pushed Bureau of Engraving and Printing staff to make a $250 bill prototype with Donald Trump’s face, even though a law allows only deceased individuals on cash. Beach and his senior adviser, Mike Brown, repeatedly pressed the agency last year, and Beach handed staff mock-up designs in August and September.
Two bureau employees told the Post the design push continued despite that legal barrier. One mock-up placed Trump’s face dead center on the note, and the proposed denomination was tied to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
Beach and Brown
The two Treasury appointees behind the effort were Beach, the U.S. treasurer, and Brown, his senior adviser. The artist behind one design, British painter Iain Alexander, said he had run the design past Trump, 79. Alexander said he pitched a reverse side built around “women’s liberation” with Betsy Ross, and he said Trump backed that idea enthusiastically.
That push ran into Patricia Solimene, the bureau director at the time. She warned the appointees that the note was not authorized and could take years to produce. Solimene, who had spent 24 years in the Army before becoming the first woman to run the agency, was abruptly reassigned to a new Treasury job on April 27.
Solimene’s reassignment
After Solimene was moved, Brown took over her old role. In a farewell email, Solimene wrote, “The buck stopped here.” Former bureau director Larry Felix said the bill is not statutorily authorized, and he pointed to the last $100 redesign, which took more than 10 years to complete.
The Treasury Department said the Bureau of Engraving and Printing “is conducting appropriate planning and due diligence” and that “should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation.” It also said Beach had never asked staff to print the bill before congressional passage.
Congress and the $250 note
Lawmakers floated a bill last year to let Trump appear on a $250 note in time for the country’s 250th birthday, but it has not gone through. The bureau’s work therefore runs up against the same hurdle Solimene flagged: without congressional authorization, the note cannot move forward.
The Treasury had already approved $100 bills bearing Trump’s signature, and those notes are now rolling off the presses in downtown Washington, D.C. For anyone watching the $250 bill push, the practical next step sits on Capitol Hill, where the legal authority for any new note would have to be created first.
