An enormous new batch of documents released to Motherboard and other news outlets from the Bureau of Prisons in response to public records requests offers the most detailed look yet at the last days of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and serial rapist who died by suicide while awaiting sex trafficking charges. We are making the entire set of records available so that researchers, journalists, and other members of the public can examine them themselves.
The thousands of pages of documents, which are highly duplicative and poorly organized, cover Epstein’s time at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, in Manhattan, his death by suicide, and its aftermath. Among the records are things as trivial as Epstein’s commissary receipts and records of prison staffers trying to determine what to do with the $566.27 left in his account after his death.
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The documents contain a number of new revelations, among them that Epstein tried to correspond with disgraced USAA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, another high-profile sexual abuser, and that a professor at a historically Black college sought money from Epstein, writing, “Our accepting your $5 million will show the world you are not a pariah and may help you avoid a conviction like Bill Cosby.”
The documents include visitor logs of who came to see Epstein during his time at MCC, the troubled jail facility where he was held; those logs, which are largely illegible, will likely be subject to a great deal of scrutiny in the weeks to come. The documents also contain extraordinarily detailed medical and psychiatric records from before Epstein died, as well as minutiae like discussions between prison staff and Epstein’s attorneys about a device he needed for sleep apnea and an extension cord he needed to run it. The documents show that highly placed officials at the Bureau of Prisons were paying close attention to Epstein’s incarceration; an associate warden emailed MCC asking to be kept in the loop about anything that transpired while he was in custody, and was subsequently provided highly detailed information about what Epstein was doing.
Many of the documents show contradictory or confusing information. A record of an assessment Epstein was given to gauge the likelihood that he would be a sexual abuser in prison notes a “History of prior prison sexual predation” as a risk factor before deeming him a low risk to be abusive; a psychological intake screening, however, notes that he has “No history of sexual predation in a correctional setting” as well as, strangely, “No sexual offense convictions.” (In 2008, Epstein was convicted in Florida of procuring a minor for prostitution.)
More importantly, the documents also show the chaos, anger and recrimination that ensued among prison officials, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and Epstein’s lawyers in the hours after Epstein died. From the start, the investigation into Epstein’s death was a leaky one, with revelations appearing in places like Breitbart and the Daily Mail before prison officials or the U.S. attorneys were aware of them. In one email, a lawyer from the U.S. Attorney’s office wrote that they were getting “increasingly frantic calls from defense counsel,” who were, they said, “seeing information in the press that we—the U.S. Attorney’s Office—haven’t yet received.”
At another point the same day, the U.S. Attorney’s office said they got a call from Epstein’s defense counsel, reporting that “a person close to Mr. Epstein” had gotten a call from someone claiming to be an investigator with MCC “and told the individual that Mr. Epstein’s body was ready to be picked up at the hospital.” The U.S. Attorney’s office was unsure whether the call was legitimate or a hoax, adding “Defense counsel is understandably concerned that they (and others with connections with Mr. Epstein) are starting to get hoax or otherwise inaccurate information through phone calls and emails.”
The office added that it “respectfully but urgently” asked the BOP and MCC to communicate important information, seeming to have some inkling of the uproar and conspiracy theories that were about to ensue.
“If it is accurate that BOP/MCC is prepared to release Mr. Epstein’s body,” the email added, “his defense counsel is extremely concerned about whether that has been enough time for a full autopsy and any other investigative steps, and we would want to confirm that the FBI team addressing this matter has also been informed – but that’s only if this is not a hoax obviously.”
The full collection of files as we received them can be found here; they are highly duplicative and non-chronological, and contain many of the same emails repeatedly. We’ll continue to have new stories about the revelations they contain.
This is a breaking news story and may be updated.
