Overview
- U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas, acting on a New York Times request on Wednesday, unsealed a handwritten page presented as Epstein’s farewell.
- The note is unsigned, does not name Epstein, and includes lines such as “They investigated me for months — NOTHING FOUND!!!” and “It is a privilege to choose the time to say goodbye,” but no authority has verified who wrote it.
- Former cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione says he found the page in a comic book after Epstein’s reported July 2019 suicide attempt and later gave it to his lawyers, and the Justice Department says it never had the document in its files.
- Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told Business Insider the note is a forgery and argued the phrasing could have been copied from Epstein’s emails.
- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces renewed calls to resign after a closed-door interview where he cited memory lapses about a 2012 lunch on Epstein’s island, and President Trump has so far kept him in his post.