A Justice Department attorney appears to have called Jeffrey Epstein’s death a “murder” in a newly unsealed email from 2020.
The email, uncovered from the latest release of DOJ files on the convicted sex offender, shows an individual identifying themselves as an “AUSA in EDNY”—likely an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York—referring to a supposed “investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.”
Dated June 11, 2020, when President Donald Trump was in his first term, the email joins a string of revelations that appear to clash with the official ruling that Epstein’s death in a New York City jail cell in 2019 was a suicide.
“I’m an AUSA in EDNY and am working on an investigation into the death of an inmate at the Brooklyn MDC,” the email reads. The DOJ has redacted both the sender and the recipient.
“The OCME told me that it signed a confidentiality agreement in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. We were hoping to extend a similar agreement and I wanted to see if you could share the agreement (or a boilerplate version of it).”
The OCME likely refers to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The email appears to suggest that Epstein’s death may have been investigated as a murder long after officials declared that he had died by suicide.
The disgraced financier, 66, was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019, in his cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson ruled Epstein’s death a suicide by hanging six days later.
But a series of security lapses at the jail where Epstein was held and lingering questions around official accounts have fueled speculation about the circumstances of Epstein’s death.
Fresh doubts about the government’s conclusion exploded after the DOJ released more than 3.5 million files on the pedophile last month, including a draft statement on Epstein’s death that was dated the day before he was found dead.
The statement draft, dated August 9, 2019, was attributed to the Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Meanwhile, Epstein’s former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, claimed in a pardon petition filed last summer and recently obtained by the Daily Beast that Epstein was deliberately left unprotected in federal custody.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
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