The Department of Justice claimed Tuesday that a letter purportedly sent by Jeffrey Epstein to convicted sex offender and former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — released as part of a trove of files related to Epstein in response to a recent law passed by Congress — was fabricated.
The handwritten letter to Nassar quickly grabbed headlines because of an allusion to President Donald Trump. The letter’s author, signing as “J. Epstein” wrote, “Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls.” The letter was sent in August 2019, when Trump was the president.
The jail flagged the letter for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019.
Just hours after the letter’s release on Tuesday, the DOJ claimed that the FBI had determined the handwriting does not match Jeffrey Epstein’s. The department also said that several details on the envelope in question were incorrect.
The letter was apparently postmarked three days after Epstein’s death in Northern Virginia, not New York, where Epstein was in jail. The return address also did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which the DOJ said is required for outgoing mail.
“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 department wrote in a post on X.
The DOJ did not indicate who may have fabricated the letter or what their motivation was for doing so.
Tuesday’s document dump includes a number of other references to Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein. Those include a 2020 email from an undisclosed U.S. attorney who wrote that Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported.” Several tips to the FBI also mention Trump.
The DOJ was required by law to release all files related to its investigation of Epstein by Dec. 19 after Congress passed a law last month, but the department failed to release all files by its deadline. The first batch of files heavily featured former President Bill Clinton and did not include many of the documents that mention Trump.
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