Overview
- A federal judge granted a New York Times request to unseal a handwritten note tied to Jeffrey Epstein, and the Justice Department released the full text after the document sat in a court vault for nearly seven years as part of Nicholas Tartaglione’s case.
- The note is undated and unverified, and the New York Times said it could not confirm Epstein wrote it even as some phrasing mirrors language in his previously released emails.
- Tartaglione, Epstein’s last cellmate, says he found the paper in a book after a July 2019 incident in which Epstein was found with a strip of bedsheet on his neck, and he gave it to his lawyers before it entered his own trial record rather than the death investigations.
- Authorities have maintained Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 after guards failed to perform required checks and instead slept or used the internet, while skeptics point to broken cameras, a missing ligature, and disputed neck injuries to question that finding.
- Congress continues closed-door interviews about the “Epstein Files,” with Democratic lawmakers saying Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick struggled to explain records that place him with Epstein after 2005, including a 2012 visit to Epstein’s private island.