DOJ releases letter purportedly sent by Epstein to Nassar

A letter that appears to have been written by Jeffrey Epstein to serial sex abuser Larry Nassar, a former Michigan State University doctor, is among a batch of documents released this week by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The short message references President Donald Trump and, according to another released file, was submitted by the FBI for a handwriting analysis on July 31, 2020, after Epstein died in August 2019.

"Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls," Epstein purportedly wrote in the letter to Nassar, according to the document posted online by Trump's DOJ.

The Associated Press reported in 2023 that a letter from Epstein to Nassar was found returned in the jail's mail room weeks after Epstein's death. "It appeared he mailed it out and it was returned back to him," the investigator who found the letter told a prison official by email, according to the AP. "I am not sure if I should open it or should we hand it over to anyone?"

The contents of the letter weren't publicly revealed at the time.

On Tuesday, the White House referred a request for comment to the Department of Justice's statement, which said some of the newly released documents "contain 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 statement said.

"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."

Later Tuesday, the DOJ said on social media it was "looking into the validity" of the letter from Epstein to Nassar.

The letter to Nassar read:

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Dear L.N.

As you know by now, I have taken the "short route" home. Good Luck! We shared one thing ... our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they'd reach their full potential.

Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by, he loved to "grab snatch," whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.

Life is unfair.

Yours

J. Epstein

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The progressive organization MeidasTouch said, on social media, that the purported letter from Epstein to Nassar was among the documents posted online this week in the eighth batch of files released by the DOJ.

The U.S. Congress voted to require the DOJ to publish all of the documents in its possession related to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein, a wealthy financier who was arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges. In its statement Tuesday morning, the DOJ said it had released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents about Epstein.

Another released document showed the FBI sought a handwriting analysis of a letter from Epstein to Nassar "to conclude if the individual who wrote the letter was Epstein or another unknown person." The letter had been obtained by the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, according to the request. A person with the Bureau of Prisons contacted the FBI about the letter on Sept. 25, 2019.

"Handwriting samples from Jeffrey Epstein's cell at MCC will be submitted along with the letter in question," the request from the FBI said.

It was unclear Tuesday morning what that analysis found. The FBI New York Public Affairs Office on Tuesday said "we don't have comment" when asked about a handwriting analysis it was supposed to have done on the letter.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday noted the postmark on the envelope was Virginia, not New York, where Epstein was jailed; the return address listed the wrong jail and lacked an inmate number, "which is required for outgoing mail"; and the letter was processed three days after Epstein died.

Epstein, 66, was found dead at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, 2019. The New York City medical examiner later ruled Epstein’s death a suicide. The purported letter from Epstein to Nassar was postmarked Aug. 13, 2019. It was returned to the sender because an incorrect address for Nassar was used. The sender listed Nassar at an address inside an Arizona prison.

Mail sent by inmates goes through inspections by correctional staff, which might explain the difference in dates between when Epstein died and the postmark.

Nassar, who was sentenced to decades behind bars in separate decisions in 2017 and 2018 after he sexually abused young athletes for more than two decades, had been moved to a high-security federal prison in central Florida by August 2018.

Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast and the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, posted to social media Tuesday afternoon in response to the letter from Epstein to Nassar.

"Justice should never be dependent on social status, political affiliation, religious beliefs, or anything other than what is RIGHT," Denhollander wrote. "It is LONG past time for survivors of Epstein and Trump to be given justice."

At the time the letter was purportedly written, Trump, a Republican, was in his first term as president.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump was asked by a reporter Monday evening about the photos of former President Bill Clinton in the Epstein files released so far by the DOJ. Trump said the Epstein story is being used to deflect from Republicans' success in the economy.

"They're asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein," Trump said. "I thought that was finished. I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there is tremendous backlash.

"It's an interesting question because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they're in a picture with him because he was at a party. And you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues."

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