The curious case of the missing Jeffrey Epstein report
What happened to the unreleased Justice Department investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's death?
I promise that one day I will write a Substack post that is not about Jeffrey Epstein. But today is not that day.
Before I started working on the story I’m about to share with you, 80% of me believed Epstein killed himself, and 20% thought he was killed by someone else.
Now it’s closer to 50/50.
"We all took it by surprise," Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told me. "Nobody thought he was gonna kill himself. Nobody."
The thing is, I’m a fact-based journalist. I’m not a pundit. I’m not really interested in speculation and parlor games. And frankly, I don’t know if I’m a good enough journalist to figure out whether Epstein killed himself in jail.
There is one entity, however, that should be able to figure it out: The Justice Department Office of Inspector General.
The DOJ OIG, as it’s sometimes known, is my favorite part of the federal government. (My second-favorite part is the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, followed closely by whoever is giving IRS agents guns.) It’s the DOJ’s independent watchdog, with its own remit and statutory independence from political appointees.
And, in fact, after Epstein was found dead in his cell — under the auspices of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, which is controlled by the Bureau of Prisons, which is controlled by the Justice Department — DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz launched an investigation into the circumstances of his death.
But that was August 2019. Now it’s March 2023. More than 3.5 years later. Why hasn’t the inspector general told us anything?
I tried, as best I could, to figure out the answer to that question. The IG’s office wouldn't tell me anything. So I tried to retrace its steps and talk to everyone it would have talked to. I ended up with more questions than answers.
I think it’s important for the IG to release its report about Epstein’s death not just because of the question of whether he killed himself. It’s important because Epstein died at all.
At the time Epstein was arrested, in July 2019, he had already gotten away with rape. Ex-US Attorney Alexander Acosta gave Epstein a famously lenient plea deal in 2007, which basically allowed him to hang out in a private office for around a year and spend a little time in Palm Beach County jail. At the time authorities had already concluded he sexually abused over 30 girls.
To many of Epstein’s victims, dying in jail, after federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought charges against him, was another escape from justice.
His tally of victims also rose. A compensation program founded after his death counted 136 overall.
I spoke to lawyers who collectively represent more than 80 victims, and all of them are puzzled as to why the report hasn’t been released.
"It is unfair that the victims of Jeffrey Epstein continue to be denied the knowledge of the conditions which existed at MCC that led to Mr. Epstein's death," Gloria Allred wrote in a letter to Horowitz, which I obtained. "The victims of Mr. Epstein deserve to be told the truth about how and why the justice system failed them again."
Epstein’s death in jail is also, obviously, severely bad for public trust in law enforcement. Like, hey, shouldn’t the government keep this powerful, well-connected guy alive so he can face justice? The fact that whether he killed himself or was killed is even a major question in American life is clearly a problem.
Read my story at Insider.
PS: While working on this story, I came across this extremely cursed photo from 2000 of Donald Trump and Melania Knauss as they are, I think, trying to be in a photo with Prince Andrew, with Ghislaine Maxwell off to the side and Epstein lurking in the background. You have to see it.