The Justice Department said Tuesday that a sick jailhouse letter allegedly from notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to another convicted sex offender, former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, is a fake.
The existence of the handwritten note that claimed to be from Epstein to Nassar was first disclosed in a 2023 document dump, but the letter itself was released by the Justice Department overnight as part of its ongoing disclosure of files in the notorious case.
“Dear L.N.,” begins the letter, which was postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, three days after the financier’s body was found in his Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) cell.
“As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” the Epstein letter says. “Good luck!”
Hours after releasing the note, the Department of Justice said it was “looking into the validity of this alleged letter.” After further review, “the FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE.
“The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time,” the DOJ said.
The Department noted that the handwriting didn’t match Epstein’s; the letter was postmarked in Northern Virginia, not New York City; the return address did not include Epstein’s inmate number as required; and the name of the jail where Epstein was being held was wrongly given as “Manhattan Correctional,” not “Metropolitan Correctional.”
“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the DOJ wrote. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”
The letter to Nassar said the fake “Epstein” tries to justify the two men’s perversions, writing: “We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential.”
The letter then turns to President Trump, with the author claiming without evidence: “Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab s—ch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.
Here’s the latest on the release of the Epstein files
“Life is unfair,” the author concludes before signing off: “Yours, J. Epstein.”
Mail sent by inmates must go through inspection by correctional staff.
The letter was addressed to a prison facility in Arizona, but was returned to the MCC in late September with the explanation that Nassar was no longer being held there.
By that point, Epstein had been dead for more than seven weeks.
“When I picked up the mail from the mail room this morning there was a letter for inmate Epstein,” an unidentified MCC technician wrote. “It appeared he mailed it out and it was returned back to him. I am not sure if I should open it or should we hand it over to anyone?”
On July 31, 2020, the FBI submitted the letter for a handwriting analysis to determine “if the individual who wrote the letter was Epstein or another unknown person.” The results of that analysis were not immediately available.
Nassar was sentenced in January 2018 to between 40 and 175 years in prison on sex assault charges after he was convicted of abusing female gymnasts under the guise of giving them medical exams.
Nassar’s accusers included Olympic gold medal winners Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman.
The Justice Department issued a statement Tuesday morning noting that the nearly 30,000 pages of newly released files included “untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.
“To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the DOJ added. “Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims.”
