Federal Report on the Death of Jeffrey Epstein is Rife With Evidence of Foul Play

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Overview

More than 20 years after a woman named Maria Farmer first reported Jeffrey Epstein and his associates to the FBI in 1996 for molesting children, the federal government finally arrested Epstein in 2019 for “sex trafficking of minors.” Only five weeks later, this uber-wealthy financier with hordes of friends in high places was dead.

In the weeks leading up to Epstein’s death, an array of people predicted that unless Epstein was heavily guarded in prison, he would likely be killed to keep him silent. Several first-hand witnesses had implicated powerful people in Epstein’s child sex crimes, and journalists had reported that Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and was likely engaged in sexual blackmail, a tactic of intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA.

Despite those suspicious circumstances, dozens of media outlets are reporting there’s no evidence of foul play in Epstein’s death based on a recent report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice—Obama appointee Michael Horowitz. ABC News, for example, claims the report proves “Epstein died by suicide” and “foul play was not possible.”

In reality, the Horowitz Report presents more than a dozen facts consistent with the conclusion that Epstein died of a coerced and abetted suicide. Combined with corroborating primary sources like court filings, it is clear that federal officials repeatedly endangered Epstein’s life and systematically mishandled evidence that could incriminate others in his death and sex crimes.

The facts—documented below with photos and more than 100 quotes primarily from the Horowitz Report and other government and legal documents—show that the following events took place:

  • Federal prison officials placed Epstein in a cell with a murderous, hulking ex-cop, a death trap for any child molester.
  • Less than two weeks later, prison guards found Epstein in the middle of the night in a semiconscious state with a rope and “friction marks” around his neck.
  • Despite a court order requiring the prison to preserve video surveillance footage near Epstein’s cell during the strangulation, federal prison officials failed to do so and also lost the backup due to “technical errors.”
  • Federal prison officials took Epstein off “suicide watch” just one day after the strangulation without determining whether Epstein was attacked by his cellmate or tried to commit suicide.
  • One day before Epstein’s death, federal prison officials removed his new cellmate and didn’t replace him. They did this even though a prison psychologist sent an email to over 70 prison staffers stating that Epstein “needs” a cellmate—a common suicide prevention measure.
  • One day before Epstein’s death, a federal court unsealed more than 2,000 pages of lawsuit records that named and implicated wealthy and powerful people in Epstein’s sex crimes, as well as federal officials in covering up the crimes.
  • One day before Epstein’s death, federal prison officials permitted Epstein to make a completely unmonitored phone call in direct violation of prison policy and under patently false pretenses.
  • Federal officers placed a hoard of linens in Epstein’s cell, which is commonly prohibited because they can be used to create nooses.
  • Federal officers left Epstein alone in his cell for nearly eight hours on the night he died—despite the fact that they were required to check on all inmates in his unit “at least twice per hour” and were only 15 feet from Epstein’s cell.
  • Federal officers falsified records to show that they had checked on Epstein, a violation of federal law punishable by up to five years in prison.
  • Federal prosecutors “dismissed all charges pending against” the two officers who falsified the records and “declined” to prosecute others who “falsely certified inmate countslips and round sheets on the day before and the day of Epstein’s death.”
  • Federal prison officials failed to record footage from 9 of the 11 surveillance cameras around Epstein’s cell on the night of his death, including one that showed Epstein’s cell tier and cell door.
  • The FBI agents who searched Epstein’s New York mansion found and then abandoned a sexually explicit trove of photos and CDs labeled with the names of “young” females alongside people other than Epstein. This allowed one of Epstein’s most notorious accomplices to take the evidence and potentially scrub it before giving it to the feds.
  • To this day, the federal government hasn’t revealed the names of the people that were written beside the “young” females on Epstein’s CDs.

While describing Jeffery Epstein as “arguably” one of the “most notorious” federal inmates, the Horowitz Report states that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons “provided” him “with the opportunity to take his own life.”

Nevertheless, the Horowitz team fails to even consider—much less rule out—that Epstein was coerced to commit suicide and that federal officials deliberately allowed it to happen.

The Horowitz team also buries key facts deep within their report and separates related facts from one another, making it difficult to connect the dots. Thus, a read of the executive summary isn’t nearly enough to understand what lurks within the report.

All of this accords with the contention that influential people were complicit in the death and child sex crimes of Epstein and have not been held accountable.

Background

After the FBI failed to act on Maria Farmer’s report in 1996—while the FBI was under the authority of President Clinton—Epstein and his colleagues reportedly assaulted, raped, and trafficked dozens of girls on hundreds of occasions over the next decade.

In 2002, another chance to stop Epstein arose when a Vanity Fair reporter uncovered evidence that he had sexually abused two sisters. But the editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, removed the evidence from a lengthy profile of Epstein published by the magazine. After Epstein was arrested, Carter made provably false excuses for his actions.

In 2005, it seemed Epstein was about to be held accountable when the family of a 14-year-old girl reported to the Palm Beach Police that Epstein molested their daughter. The police responded with an aggressive investigation that initially produced “sworn taped statements” about Epstein’s illicit activities from “five victims and seventeen witnesses.”

The police also searched Epstein’s home and trash, finding compelling evidence of his guilt, including the names and phone numbers of the girls who made the accusations and notes about when they were due to come over.

By the time the investigation was complete, the police had “identified approximately 20 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who were sexually abused by Epstein.”

However, the local prosecutor, a Democrat named Barry Krischer, only charged Epstein with prostitution without interviewing any of the victims. Outraged by this and other “highly unusual” actions of Krischer’s office, the Palm Beach Police Chief sent Krischer a letter suggesting that he should be disqualified “from the prosecution of these cases.”

The Palm Beach Police also alerted the FBI, which took control of the case and shut out the police.

Then the U.S. Department of Justice—which was under the authority of George W. Bush—worked with Krischer to craft a secretive deal with Epstein. This consisted of a non-prosecution agreement that smeared Epstein’s schoolgirl victims as prostitutes and allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two relatively minor violations of state law.

The feds made that deal despite the fact that they had “identified 40 young women who can be characterized as victims” of Epstein under federal law against the “Sexual Exploitation and Other Abuse of Children.”

Krischer later denied that he had anything to do with the deal, but the threat of a lawsuit by the Palm Beach Post forced his office to release a cache of documents that proves he played an integral role in it. In one incriminating email, Krischer wrote to a federal prosecutor about the deal, “Glad we could get this worked out for reasons I won’t put in writing.”

Under the agreement, Epstein was required to register as a sex offender, serve 18 months in a county jail, and spend a year under “community control” (a mild form of house arrest with numerous exceptions which allowed Epstein to travel extensively). Moreover, Epstein only served 13 months in jail—and during most of that time—he was allowed leave the jail for 12 hours a day, six days a week under a “work release” program at a non-profit he ran.

In exchange for Epstein agreeing to those terms, the federal government promised it would never press “any criminal charges” against Epstein or “any” of his “potential co-conspirators” for an array of federal child sex crimes committed in Florida during 2001 to 2007.

In 2019, a federal court ruled that the Department of Justice concealed that non-prosecution agreement from Epstein’s victims in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. This law requires the government to keep crime victims informed and involved with any legal actions in their cases. The court also found that the Department of Justice deceived the victims by telling them to be “patient” while the investigation was ongoing, when in fact, the feds had already agreed to never prosecute Epstein for the crimes he committed against them.

After this episode, Epstein switched tactics to better conceal his crimes. According to the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands where Epstein owned two private islands, Epstein “began to focus on procuring and abusing women from Eastern Europe” because their “immigration status and language barriers made them more isolated, dependent, and vulnerable to Epstein’s abuse and manipulation.”

Those victims included “numerous girls between the age of 12 and 17 years old” who were forced “into sexual servitude in service of Epstein’s desires, and those of his associates.”

Finally, President Trump’s Department of Justice arrested Epstein in 2019 for sex trafficking of minors. That’s where the story really gets interesting.

The Cellmate Death Trap

After Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019, he was denied bail and placed in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. This was a federal prison run by the Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Department of Justice, which was under the authority of President Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr.

Keeping imprisoned child molesters safe is challenging, as they are widely hated and frequently attacked by their fellow inmates. That’s because many prisoners were sexually abused as children, and they consider beating or killing child sex offenders to be a heroic deed, as evidenced by the following facts:

  • A 2009 academic paper based on interviews of 73 former California prisoners reported that child molesters are “at the bottom of the pecking order” in prison, and other inmates’ views of them are “so negative that extreme violence is justified as a way to remove them from the general” prison population.
  • A 2022 academic paper based on interviews with eight people convicted of murdering child sex offenders in prison found that half of them justified their actions by making statements like these:
    • “He needed to feel what those kids felt.”
    • “They all deserve the death penalty, and I’m the only one has the balls to do it.”
  • Francey Hakes, a former federal prosecutor and child protection consultant, stated, “General population prisoners see it as a badge of honor to beat, stab, rape or kill sex offenders, especially child sex offenders.”
  • Leslie Walker of the Massachusetts Correctional Legal Society stated that the lives of jailed child sex predators are “truly a living hell” and that they “are at risk of being murdered, having their food taken, having their cells defecated and urinated in.”
  • Lt. Ken Lewis, a corrections officer and spokesman for Los Angeles County State Prison, stated that unless a known pedophile is placed in protective custody, “they usually don’t make it.”
  • A 2023 academic book titled Avenging Child Sex Abuse documents that “prisoners in correctional facilities conspire with rogue correctional officers to mete out their own form of ‘convict justice’ on people who hurt children.”
  • A Massachusetts prisoner who strangled to death the infamous pedophile priest John Geoghan said that he killed Geoghan to “make a statement,” “put a stop to the pedophilia in the church,” and “get the thoughts out of my mind of being molested myself.”

Given Epstein’s reputation as an infamous child molester, one would think that the feds would have carefully protected him from inmates who were likely to harm him. Instead, they placed him in a cell with a hulking ex-cop who was facing a death penalty trial for ruthlessly murdering four people.

This individual, Nicholas Tartaglione, was arrested for and later convicted of torturing and strangling a man to death with a zip tie while making his nephew watch. He then took the nephew, another nephew, and a family friend of the man he murdered to a “remote wooded location, forced them to kneel, and executed them with gunshots to the back of the head.”

The Horowitz Report mentions none of these facts and innocuously describes Tartaglione as “Inmate 1.” Nor does the report mention that child molesters are prime targets of prison violence.

The only justification given in the Horowitz Report for the decision to place “Inmate 1” in a cell with Epstein is that an unnamed “Warden” said they were both “high-profile” inmates and “believed” Tartaglione was “the least likely” prisoner in the Special Housing Unit “to harm Epstein.”

The Special Housing Unit, according to the Horowitz Report, is where inmates are “kept locked in their cells for approximately 23 hours per day, to ensure their own safety as well as the safety of staff and other inmates.” Epstein was transferred there because inmates were aware of “his notoriety.”

Regardless of whether Tartaglione hurt Epstein, placing a notorious child molester in a cell with a murderous ex-cop who could easily kill Epstein with his bare hands was a blatant death trap.

The First Strangulation

Less than two weeks after Epstein was confined with Tartaglione, prison staffers heard “noises coming from Epstein’s cell” around 1:27 AM on July 23, 2019. When they got there, they found “Epstein lying on the floor” with “an orange homemade rope” made from a “sheet” around his neck.

Official prison records say that Epstein was found “unresponsive,” so a staffer “began chest compressions” but “stopped when they realized that Epstein was already breathing.”

A prison staffer who arrived on the scene moments later said that Epstein was “lying in the fetal position” while “breathing heavily and snoring.” She tried to verbally awaken him, but he “flickered his eyes and continued snoring.” Staffers then “unsuccessfully tried to get Epstein to stand on his own, and then placed him on a stretcher and took him to the Health Services Unit.”

Epstein survived this incident and alleged that Tartaglione tried to kill him, while Tartaglione alleged that Epstein tried to kill himself.

The Horowitz Report claims that Epstein changed his story a day after the incident by saying that he didn’t “remember how he sustained the injuries to his neck.” In reality, Epstein’s statements are not contradictory. Given that Epstein was found in a semiconscious state with a rope and “friction marks” around his neck, he could reasonably deduce that his cellmate strangled him—regardless of what he could remember.

Over the next five days, Epstein reiterated to the prison’s psychological staffers that he was not suicidal, didn’t have any “memory of what occurred,” and “believed that his cellmate had something to do with it.”

The executive summary of the Horowitz Report creates a very different impression by reporting that Epstein “first told” prison officials that “he thought his cellmate had tried to kill him, but later said he did not know what occurred and did not want to talk about how he had sustained his injuries.”

Thirty-four pages later, the report reveals the rest of the story, which is that “Epstein told the medical staff that he still did not want to talk about how he sustained his injuries, but he believed that his cellmate had something to do with it.”

Two prison staffers told the Horowitz team that Epstein had asked if Tartaglione could be his cellmate after the incident. The executive summary of the Horowitz Report treats this as a fact, writing that “Epstein also later asked if he could be housed with the same cellmate.” However, the report provides no indication that any of the staffers documented such a request in their official reports with the Bureau of Prisons.

In contrast, a staffer who took Epstein to the medical center wrote in a Bureau of Prisons report that Epstein told him Tartaglione “tried to extort” him in the week leading up to the incident and “threatened to beat him if he did not pay.”

The staffer then told a supervisor what Epstein said to him, and the supervisor spoke directly to Epstein. She documented in a Bureau of Prisons report that Epstein told her this: About 4–5 hours before the incident, Epstein returned to his cell after visiting with his attorney, and Tartaglione:

  • opened up the New York Daily News to a page “that had Epstein’s picture and reported that Epstein was worth $77 million.”
  • “looked at his picture, balled it up, and threw it in the garbage.”

The Horowitz Report doesn’t reveal whether the Daily News published such content, but Just Facts found two Daily News stories in the month leading up to the incident that show a picture of Epstein and state that his Manhattan townhouse is worth $77 million.

The Bureau of Prisons never made an official determination as to what happened to Epstein on that night. The Horowitz Report explains it like this:

  • The Bureau of Prisons’ Special Investigative Services “found insufficient evidence to support either that Epstein had harmed himself or that he had been harmed by his cellmate.”
  • “The Staff Psychologist noted in the assessment report that it was “unclear whether Epstein had placed the string around his neck or if someone else did.”
  • “Disciplinary charges against Epstein for alleged self-mutilation were not sustained due to insufficient evidence.”

The First & Second Missing Videos

Beyond placing Epstein in a cell with a musclebound killer, prison officials didn’t preserve video surveillance footage near Epstein’s cell during the first strangulation, despite a court order requiring them to do so. They then lost a backup of the video due to “technical errors.”

In a January 2020 letter to the judge presiding over Tartaglione’s trial, the U.S. Department of Justice provided this bizarre explanation for the missing footage:

  • Two days after the incident, Tartaglione’s attorney requested that the prison “preserve video footage” from the surveillance camera “outside” of their cell.
  • More than five months later in January 2020, the prison gave the Department of Justice a “copy of the video that it had preserved.”
  • The Department of Justice reviewed the video and found that it didn’t come from the camera by Epstein’s cell because it “did not show corrections officers responding” to the incident.
  • Prison officials then claimed that they “inadvertently preserved video from the wrong tier” of the prison because their “computer system listed a different, incorrect cell for” Epstein.
  • The prison had “a backup system in place that housed all video for the Special Housing Unit, including the video” by Epstein’s cell at the time of the incident.
  • The FBI “reviewed that backup system as part of an unrelated investigation” and determined that the requested video no longer exists on the backup system and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of technical errors.”

The actual events are even shiftier than that. Before the prison sent the wrong footage to the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors told a federal judge in December 2019 that no one could find any footage, stirring a media firestorm. Thus, the fuller chronological sequence of events also includes the second bullet below:

  • Two days after Epstein’s July 23 incident, Tartaglione’s attorney requested the footage.
  • More than four months later on December 18, federal prosecutors told a federal judge that they couldn’t find any footage.
  • One day after that on December 19, a federal prosecutor told a federal judge that “the video was preserved.”
  • About two weeks later on January 3, 2020, prison officials sent the video to the Department of Justice, but the footage was actually from another tier of the prison.
  • About a week after that on January 9, the Department of Justice revealed that the prison has a video backup system, but the FBI determined from an “unrelated investigation” that “technical errors” destroyed the footage “since at least August 2019”—the same month Epstein died.

The letter containing those explanations was co-signed by Maurene Comey, an assistant U.S. Attorney and the daughter of James Comey, the former FBI director fired by President Trump.

The Horowitz Report makes no mention of these missing videos or the circumstances surrounding them. This obscures a telling pattern of disappearing evidence documented below.

Suicide Prevention Measures Stopped

Even though the Bureau of Prisons “requires that inmates identified as suicide risks be placed on suicide watch until no longer at imminent risk,” prison officials took Epstein off “suicide watch” just one day after the first strangulation incident. They did this even though they never determined if Epstein attempted suicide or his cellmate attacked him.

Inmates on suicide watch are “housed in a dedicated room, typically in the health services area, where they are continuously monitored by specially trained staff or inmates.” Also, “the cell lights are on 24 hours a day; and the inmate is given a special mattress, blanket, and smock to wear.”

Just six days later on July 30, prison officials took Epstein off “psychological observation.” This is similar to suicide watch “except that inmates were allowed to have their clothing and some materials, such as books, as determined by” the Psychology Department.

On the very same day that prison officials took Epstein off psychological observation, a staff psychologist sent an “email to over 70” prison “staff members stating that Epstein ‘needs to be housed with an appropriate cellmate.’ ” This is a common measure to prevent suicide in prison. Per the Federal Bureau of Prisons:

A high percentage of offender suicides occur in locked, single occupancy cells. Research conducted on 4,780 cases of suicide in correctional settings indicated that single-cell status is one of the strongest correlates with suicide. After-action reviews have indicated that at-risk offenders seek single cells or take advantage of staff oversights to commit suicide as soon as a cellmate [is] out of the cell.

In addition to requiring a cellmate, the prison’s chief psychologist told the prison’s executive staff that Epstein should be “housed with an alleged sex offender,” apparently to reduce the risk of violence. The prison warden ultimately decided to house Epstein with “Inmate 3,” who is not identified by the Horowitz Report.

Then ten days later on August 9, prison officials removed Epstein’s cellmate due to a “routine, pre-arranged transfer” and didn’t replace him. This was in spite of the email to 70 staffers and multiple staff conversations about the need for Epstein to have a cellmate.

By the next morning on August 10, Epstein was dead. This was only five weeks after he was arrested on July 6 and less than three weeks after the first strangulation incident on July 23.

The Unsealed Legal Documents

Beyond the removal of Epstein’s cellmate, another important event occurred on the day before he died: A federal court unsealed more than 2,000 pages of records from a lawsuit involving Epstein’s child sex trafficking accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. These records implicated wealthy and powerful people in Epstein’s sex crimes, as well as government officials in covering up the crimes.

In the tame words of the Horowitz Report, “there was significant media coverage of information contained within the unsealed court filings” and “additional high-profile public figures were also named in the released documents.”

Here are some of the actual names and shocking details from the unsealed documents:

  • Sworn testimony from Rinaldo Rizzo—the house manager for Palm Beach billionaire Glenn Dubin and his wife Eva Andersson-Dubin—revealed that a “very attractive” 15-year-old girl showed up at Dubin’s home with Epstein, and the girl was “quivering” and “on the verge of crying.” This led Rizzo to ask her if she was okay, and she began “shaking uncontrollably” and told Rizzo and his wife that she had just come from an island where she was asked for sex, and “I don’t know how I got from the island to here.”

    While crying “hysterically,” she also told Rizzo and his wife that Maxwell took away her passport and cell phone when she refused to have sex, and Epstein and Maxwell threatened her to stay silent.

    A month later, Rizzo said the “Dubin family” took him and the girl on a flight to Sweden, and “we stopped at an airport that we didn’t usually stop at and she got off the plane.”
  • Rizzo’s testimony was corroborated by sworn testimony from a woman named Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who said that Maxwell “directed” her to have sex with Glenn Dubin when she was a minor.

    Giuffre previously stated that Epstein and Maxwell coerced her to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew in three separate locations: London, New York, and Epstein’s private island. To substantiate her claim, Giuffre released a photo (right) of herself with Andrew and Maxwell, which has since been authenticated by a professor of digital forensics and in several other ways.

    In the unsealed documents, Giuffre’s attorney added that Maxwell “never offered a legal explanation for why Prince Andrew was photographed with his hand around Ms. Giuffre’s bare waist while she was a minor child” in Maxwell’s “house in London.” The lawyer emphasized that the “photograph corroborates Ms. Giuffre’s claims, and there is no other reasonable explanation why an American child should be in the company of adults not her kin, in the London house owned by the girlfriend of a now-convicted sex offender.”
  • Sworn testimony from a woman named Johanna Sjoberg corroborated the allegations of Giuffre. Sjoberg stated that while she was at Epstein’s New York City mansion, Maxwell took out a puppet that looked just like Andrew, and “they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.” Several months later, a former worker on Epstein’s island named Steve Scully stated that he witnessed Prince Andrew kissing and groping Giuffre on Epstein’s private island.
  • Giuffre’s account of an intimate party on Epstein’s private island stated that Bill Clinton attended without Hillary and flirted during dinner with two “girls” from New York.
  • A legal filing cited testimony from two domestic servants who worked at Epstein’s home and personally saw “photos of naked children” and “photos of young nude females” on Epstein’s computer.
  • Sworn testimony from the lead detective of a 2005–2006 investigation into Epstein by local police revealed that “computers had been removed” from Epstein’s home before police could search it, and “nude photographs of girls” were “turned over to the FBI.”
  • A legal filing stated that that the federal government “possesses photos of nude, young females confiscated from Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion” but “will not share the photos” as evidence for the lawsuit.
  • A legal filing alleged that the federal government’s 2017 non-prosecution agreement with Epstein prevented Giuffre “from raising powerful objections” that “would have shed tremendous public light on Epstein and other powerful individuals.”
  • A legal filing alleged that “Epstein also trafficked” Giuffre “for sexual purposes to many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”
  • A legal filing alleged that “Epstein required” Giuffre “to describe the events that she had with these men so that he could potentially blackmail them.”

After these documents were unsealed, Giuffre concisely described the situation by saying that Epstein “passed” her “around like a platter of fruit.”

All of this is corroborated by a leaked video of ABC News reporter Amy Robach stating on a hot mic in August 2019 that she “had the story” on Epstein for three years,” but ABC “would not put it on the air” even though Giuffre “had pictures,” and “it was unbelievable what we had—Clinton—we had everything”—including “other women backing it up.”

In the same leaked video, Robach said, “So do I think he [Epstein] was killed? A hundred percent. Yes, I do. He made his whole living blackmailing people. Yep. There were a whole lot of men in those planes, a lot of men who visited that island, lot of powerful men who came into that apartment.”

When this leaked video became public after an ABC insider sent it to Project Veritas, Robach didn’t deny any of what she said but claimed that she was “caught in a private moment of frustration” and that her comments about “Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island were in reference” to what Giuffre told her during an “interview in 2015,” “not what ABC News had verified through our reporting.”

For the record, Bill Clinton denies he was ever on Epstein’s island and claims that he “took a total of four trips” on Epstein’s plane and met with Epstein twice. Contrary to those claims:

  • at least three people have stated that they saw Clinton on Epstein’s island, including Giuffre, Steve Scully, and Doug Band, Clinton’s right-hand man during his post-presidency.
  • flight logs show Clinton flew on Epstein’s jet at least 26 times.
  • federal records show Epstein visited the Clinton White House at least 17 times while bringing at least eight different women with him.

The Unmonitored Phone Call

In addition to the removal of Epstein’s cellmate and the release of legal records with the potential to destroy powerful people if Epstein struck a plea deal that confirmed their involvement, the Horowitz Report documents another extraordinary event on the day before he died: Epstein was permitted to make a completely unmonitored phone call in direct violation of prison policy.

The timeline and far-fetched nature of these events reek of foul play:

  • A senior prison official told the Horowitz team that while “he was on an elevator” with Epstein and his lawyer in the days leading up to Epstein’s death, the lawyer asked the official “about getting Epstein the necessary documentation to make calls.” The official replied that “Epstein was able to make calls through the Inmate Telephone System,” but Epstein complained that “they monitor those phone calls.”
  • On the day before he died, Epstein asked the person who manages the prison in the warden’s absence if he could make a phone call to his mother. This was a transparently false request given that Epstein’s mother died 15 years earlier in 2004.
  • Even though the U.S. Bureau of Prisons requires that all telephone calls from inmates to everyone but their attorneys be recorded, the prison manager agreed to let Epstein call his “mother” using an unrecorded line. These lines are only supposed to be used for attorney calls to protect attorney-client privilege.
  • The prison didn’t keep any information about the call except for the date (August 9), time (6:58–7:19 PM), and area code to which it was dialed (646, New York City).
  • The prison manager:
    • heard a male voice answer (obviously not Epstein’s mother) and didn’t verify his identity.
    • didn’t report the call to the prison’s Special Investigative Services staff, as required by Bureau of Prisons policy.

The only explanation given in the Horowitz Report for any of these actions is that the prison manager thought Epstein wasn’t approved to make personal calls through the recorded Inmate Telephone System, and “he viewed ensuring that inmates had family socialization as a part of his job,” so “he would allow inmates to place telephone calls if they were unable to make calls under ordinary circumstances.”

In reality, Epstein had already filled out the “paperwork that allowed him to place calls through the Inmate Telephone System” and was “issued the necessary documentation to make” those calls weeks earlier. It stretches belief that the acting warden of a federal prison wouldn’t know this about such a high-profile inmate.

Furthermore, the Department of Justice argued that Epstein should be denied bail because “the government has real concerns—grounded in past experience with this defendant”—that he “could attempt to pressure and intimidate witnesses and potential witnesses in this case, including victims and their families, and otherwise attempt to obstruct justice.” Yet, a federal prison that is part of the Department of Justice let Epstein make a completely unmonitored phone call based on patently false claims and against multiple prison policies.

Adding to the mystery, the Horowitz team claims to have identified the person who “Epstein actually spoke” with, a woman anonymously described as “Individual 1.” The report says that she “declined to be interviewed” and stated through her attorney that she “was in the country of Belarus at the time of the call.”

The Horowitz Report cagily says “there are methods by which a call to the 646 area code could connect to a telephone in Belarus,” but they “did not investigate the factual accuracy” of this claim.

The report also says the woman’s attorney claimed she and Epstein discussed things like “books” and “music” on the call and that Epstein told her “he loved her, to be strong, and that he would not be able to call her again for another month.” Because Epstein was already allowed to make monitored and recorded calls, it strains belief that Epstein sought and got an unmonitored phone call to talk about such niceties.

Spelling out the implications of the situation, the Northeast Regional Director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons found Epstein’s phone call to be “extremely concerning” because “it could have potentially led” to Epstein’s death, “but we don’t, we will never know.”

What we do know is that forced or coerced suicide is not uncommon, and there was a horde of powerful people with plausible motives to tell Epstein, “If you don’t want anything to happen to your friends and family, we need to be certain that you won’t talk.”

While failing to even acknowledge—much less address—the possibility of coerced suicide, the Horowitz team claims they “did not uncover evidence that contradicted” the FBI’s “determination regarding the absence of criminality in connection with how Epstein died” because they didn’t find “credible information that Epstein’s cause of death was something other than suicide.”

The Excessive Linens

Beyond putting Epstein in a cell with a murderous ex-cop, losing videos of his strangulation, taking him off suicide watch, taking him off psychological observation, leaving him without a cellmate, and allowing him make an unmonitored call on the same day that unsealed documents implicated powerful people in his crimes—prison officials took other actions that heightened the odds of Epstein’s death.

Because bed linens are often used to create nooses for suicides in prisons, officials commonly limit the amount and types of linens given to inmates. Yet, the Horowitz Report states that Epstein’s cell had an “excess amount of linens, which provided an opportunity for him to commit suicide.”

The report also shows a “photograph of Epstein’s cell after his death” (right) that is loaded with bed linens and states that “numerous nooses made from the excess prison sheets were found in his cell” after his death.

Notably, the report never says that Epstein killed himself with any specific object. Instead, it shows a picture of a noose found in his cell and discloses in a footnote that it is “not the ligature Epstein used to kill himself.”

The Horowitz Report provides these accounts of Epstein’s stockpile of linens:

  • The inmate transferred from Epstein’s cell on the day before he died said that Epstein “had two extra blankets,” which he found to be “unusual because none of the inmates had extra blankets.”
  • A prison official said that “each inmate” was allowed to “have two sheets and one blanket,” and he “deduced” that some of the extra linens may have been for Epstein’s cellmate even though those “items should have been removed as soon as” he was transferred.
  • A high-ranking prison official said that “Epstein had too many linens, t-shirts, and blankets in his cell,” and this was a “security issue because it ‘gives the inmates the materials to be able to make homemade fashioned and improvised nooses’ ” or tie them together to make escape ropes.

There can be little doubt that prison staff were aware of Epstein’s hoard of linens. This is because an official said staffers went “into every cell when the inmates took their showers,” and all of them took showers on the day before Epstein died.

An issue not addressed in the Horowitz report is the type of linens given to Epstein. Various manufacturers make suicide prevention blankets for jails that are supposed to be “impossible to roll or tear into a noose or weapon used for self-harm.” This raises the question of why Epstein wasn’t given one, especially after the first strangulation incident.

The Skipped Inspections & Falsified Documents

On top of everything else that federal prison officials did to imperil Epstein’s life, they also left him alone in his cell for nearly eight hours on the night he died—despite a requirement that they check on all inmates in his unit “at least twice per hour.”

{Caption: Location of officers on the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Credit: DOJ}

The Horowitz team chalks this up to “staffing shortages,” but their own report shows it was extremely easy to check on Epstein. That’s because his cell was “the closest cell with a direct line of sight” to where the officers were located and just “15 feet away” from them.

Nor were the officers busy with other inmates. The Horowitz Report says that surveillance footage of the officers shows they “were seated at the desk” during the eight hours Epstein was left alone and never “rose from their seats or approached” the tier of Epstein’s cell.

Furthermore, the officers falsified records to show that they had performed the checks, a violation of federal law punishable by up to five years in prison. Yet, the Department of Justice “dismissed all charges pending against” two of the most serious offenders and “declined” to prosecute others who “falsely certified inmate countslips and round sheets on the day before and the day of Epstein’s death.”

This is part of a pattern, as the Department of Justice also “declined” to prosecute federal officials who falsified records about another infamous child molester, Dr. Larry Nassar. As documented by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, “approximately 70 or more young athletes were allegedly sexually abused by Nassar” after the FBI was given graphic evidence that this was occurring. Along with this dereliction of duty, the Inspector General found that:

  • the FBI “did not document” a “September 2015 victim interview” until “17 months after the interview occurred.”
  • the FBI’s documentation of this interview “included materially false information and omitted material information.”
  • at least two FBI agents made false statements to the Inspector General about their roles in this affair.
  • one of the FBI agents applied for a job with USA Gymnastics while offering to create an “FBI public statement that would place USA Gymnastics in a positive light.”
  • FBI field offices failed to report the abuse to state or local authorities.

The Third Missing Videos

The Horowitz report states that roughly 11 surveillance cameras were “located in and around” the area of the prison” where “Epstein was confined at the time of his death.” Yet, the prison’s video system only recorded content from two of them, neither of which showed “Epstein’s cell door” or even his “cell tier.”

Boiling down more than 10 pages of details, the Horowitz team blames all of this on “a history of security camera problems” at the prison, even though the prison was given about $700,000 more than 10 months before Epstein’s death “to replace the entire camera system.”

Remarkably, the “new recording system” wasn’t installed until “a couple of days” after Epstein’s death. The purported reason for the delay was “shortages” of people who “possessed the skills required to do the camera work.”

The closest existing footage to the scene of Epstein’s death came from a camera that “captured a large part of the common area” of the unit where Epstein was housed and “portions” of the stairway leading up to his cell tier. Based on this footage, the Horowitz team concludes that “no one was seen entering Epstein’s cell tier” from the “common area,” and prison official “movements captured on video” were “generally consistent” with witness testimony.”

In combination with an autopsy that found Epstein “had a marked and obvious ligature furrow that peaked upward” on his neck—which is “consistent with suicide as opposed to a ligature strangulation”—the Horowitz team concludes he killed himself.

The AWOL Evidence

Although the Horowitz Report makes no mention of it, federal legal documents and court testimony reveal that the feds who searched Epstein’s New York mansion found and then abandoned a sexually explicit trove of photos and CDs labeled with the names of “young” females alongside people other than Epstein. The abandonment of this evidence allowed one of Epstein’s most notorious accomplices to take it and potentially scrub it before giving it to the federal government.

Two days after Epstein’s arrest, the Department of Justice sent a letter to a judge arguing that he should be denied bail. The letter, co-signed by Maurene Comey, reveals that a search of Epstein’s New York residence on the night of his arrest found:

  • “an extraordinary volume of photographs of nude and partially-nude young women or girls.”
  • “compact discs” in “a locked safe” with “hand-written labels” like “Girl pics nude” and “Young [Name] + [Name].”

Maria Farmer, who reported Epstein to the FBI back in 1996, told CBS News that Epstein’s mansion in New York was loaded with hidden cameras. Describing a surveillance room with a large number of monitors, she said, “I looked on the cameras, and I saw toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed.” She also said the house was “videoed, all the time,” and when she asked Epstein “What do you do with this?” he replied, “I keep it. I keep everything in my safe.”

Incredibly, after the feds cut open Epstein’s safe, they abandoned its contents and left the home unguarded. When they came back four days later, the contents of the safe were gone. These facts only came to light in 2021 during the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, not because the Department of Justice disclosed them to the public.

The official transcript of the sixth day of the trial—obtained exclusively by Just Facts—shows that the search team leader of Epstein’s home, FBI Special Agent Kelly Maguire, testified under oath to the following:

  • The FBI executed a search warrant of Epstein’s mansion on the day of his arrest (July 6, 2019), but the warrant limited what could be searched and seized, so the agents obtained a broader warrant on July 7, which they executed that day.
  • Under those two warrants, agents located Epstein’s safe, cut it open, and found in it “binders that contained CDs,” “external hard drives,” “jewelry,” “loose diamonds,” and “large amounts of U.S. currency and passports.”
  • The alleged reason why they didn’t seize the contents of the safe is that they didn’t “have legal authority to seize all of the CDs that day”—even though they had already obtained a second broader warrant.
  • Evidencing that the warrant didn’t exclude all CDs, Maguire was asked, “Now, at the time you observed these CDs on the safe, did you have legal authority to seize all of the CDs that day?” and she replied, “No, not all of them.”
  • When Maguire returned to Epstein’s house on July 11 with a search warrant that gave her “legal authority” to seize what they left behind, she “observed that all of the items” shown in the “photograph that I had previously seen were missing.”
  • Maguire then had a 3-way phone call with an “associate of Mr. Epstein named Richard Kahn and his legal counsel named Andrew Tomback.”
  • Within 30 minutes of “that telephone conversation, Richard Kahn came to the residence of Jeffrey Epstein” and “brought all of those items” back to Maguire “in two suitcases.”
  • Maguire said that the contents of the suitcases “appeared to be all of the items that had been previously located in the safe,” but she “didn’t look at what was on any of these CDs” before Epstein’s associates took them.

Just Facts shared the facts above with a veteran police detective and asked for his thoughts. The detective, who has been involved in the execution of more 100 search warrants, replied:

  • “This is unprecedented in my experience and violates basic protocols.”
  • “There is no apparent reason why a warrant in a child sex trafficking case would prohibit a search team from seizing items from a safe, especially CDs labeled with the names of potential victims.”
  • “Even if the warrant was so oddly restrictive, law enforcement has a duty to guard the evidence until another warrant is obtained to seize it.
  • “FBI agents, who are highly trained and heavily resourced to handle such matters, undoubtedly know that you don’t abandon evidence.”

Adding to the stench of a cover up, the person who took the contents of the safe (Richard Kahn) is not merely an “associate” of Epstein but is heavily implicated in his crimes. A 2021 civil complaint filed by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands states that Kahn and another person named Darren Indyke:

  • were “the indispensable captains of Epstein’s criminal enterprise, roles for which they were richly rewarded.”
  • “organized, controlled, and directed almost every aspect” of Epstein’s dealings.
  • were “officers in virtually every corporate entity that Epstein created to fund and conceal his activities.”
  • “directed, approved, enabled, and justified millions of dollars in payments that fueled the Epstein Enterprise’s sex trafficking.”
  • helped create “a steady supply of vulnerable female children”—including “numerous girls between the age of 12 and 17 years old”—who were placed “into sexual servitude in service of Epstein’s desires, and those of his associates.”
  • are the co-executors of Epstein’s estate and continue to “engage in a course of conduct aimed at concealing the criminal activities of the Epstein Enterprise.”
  • have “approved the release” of funds from Epstein’s estate to “pay for the legal fees and costs of persons” who allegedly “participated in the criminal activity of the Epstein Enterprise.”
  • are using money from the estate to impose “confidentiality requirements” on Epstein’s victims who receive monetary damages from the estate.
  • are requiring those victims to agree to never make future civil claims against “any person or entity arising from or related to Mr. Epstein’s conduct.”
  • are refusing to “agree to preserve documents or to release individuals from the non-disclosure agreements.”

To this day, the federal government hasn’t revealed the names of the people that were written beside the “young” females on the CDs in Epstein’s safe. Again, this is where Epstein kept the footage from his hidden cameras, according to Maria Farmer.

The FBI is also keeping other information under wraps. After Epstein died, Farmer told CBS News that the FBI “failed” her by not acting on the complaint she filed in 1996 and added, “They are trying to pretend I do not exist. I want my report and I want it printed out so I can show everyone how much they failed. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it. We’ve been requesting it forever.”

Conclusion

Despite a wealth of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were assaulting, raping, and trafficking dozens of girls, federal officials let them get away with it for more than two decades. In 2019, the feds finally arrested Epstein, and five weeks later, he was dead.

Media outlets claim there’s no evidence of foul play in Epstein’s death based on a report by Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice. In reality, the Horowitz Report and corroborating primary sources like court filings show that the following events took place:

  • Federal prison officials placed Epstein in a cell with a murderous, hulking ex-cop, a death trap for any child molester.
  • Less than two weeks later, prison guards found Epstein in the middle of the night in a semiconscious state with a rope and “friction marks” around his neck.
  • Despite a court order requiring the prison to preserve video surveillance footage near Epstein’s cell during the strangulation, federal prison officials failed to do so and also lost the backup due to “technical errors.”
  • Federal prison officials took Epstein off suicide watch just one day after the strangulation without determining whether Epstein was attacked by his cellmate or tried to commit suicide.
  • One day before Epstein’s death and ten days after a prison psychologist sent an email to over 70 prison staffers stating that Epstein “needs to be housed with an appropriate cellmate,” federal prison officials removed Epstein’s new cellmate and didn’t replace him.
  • One day before Epstein’s death, a federal court unsealed more than 2,000 pages of lawsuit records that named and implicated wealthy and powerful people in Epstein’s sex crimes, as well as federal officials in covering up the crimes.
  • One day before Epstein’s death, federal prison officials permitted Epstein to make a completely unmonitored phone call in direct violation of prison policy and under patently false pretenses.
  • Federal officers placed a hoard of linens in Epstein’s cell, which is commonly prohibited because they can be used to create nooses.
  • Federal officers left Epstein alone in his cell for nearly eight hours on the night he died—despite the fact that they were required to check on all inmates in his unit “at least twice per hour” and were only 15 feet from Epstein’s cell.
  • Federal officers falsified records to show that they had checked on Epstein, a violation of federal law punishable by up to five years in prison.
  • Federal prosecutors “dismissed all charges pending against” the two officers who falsified the records and “declined” to prosecute others who “falsely certified inmate countslips and round sheets on the day before and the day of Epstein’s death.”
  • Federal prison officials failed to record footage from 9 of the 11 surveillance cameras around Epstein’s cell on the night of his death, including one that showed Epstein’s cell tier and cell door.
  • The FBI agents who searched Epstein’s New York mansion found and then abandoned a sexually explicit trove of photos and CDs labeled with the names of “young” females alongside people other than Epstein. This allowed one of Epstein’s most notorious accomplices to take the evidence and potentially scrub it before giving it to the feds.
  • To this day, the federal government hasn’t revealed the names of the people that were written beside the “young” females on Epstein’s CDs.

Regardless of whether Epstein killed himself, the facts are overwhelming that federal officials repeatedly placed his life in danger and systematically mishandled evidence that could incriminate others in his death and sex crimes.

Nevertheless, the Horowitz team fails to even consider—much less rule out—that Epstein was coerced to commit suicide and that federal officials deliberately allowed it to happen.

The Horowitz team also excludes key facts, buries others deep within their report, and separates related facts from one another, making it difficult to connect the dots.

All of this accords with the contention that influential people were complicit in the death and child sex crimes of Epstein and have not been held accountable.

By James D. Agresti

James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.

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