FBI confirms Jeffrey Epstein letter to Larry Nassar is fake

Jessica Schladebeck and Jager Weatherby, New York Daily News on Dec 23, 2025

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A letter released this week that appeared to be penned by Jeffrey Epstein to disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar has since been confirmed as “fake” by the FBI.

The short, handwritten note was among the latest batch of files, made up of nearly 30,000 documents related to the Epstein investigation, released by the Justice Department on Monday. It was postmarked on Aug. 13, 2019, three days after Epstein was found dead inside his cell at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

“The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE,” the DOJ announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.

In addition to the letter being processed three days after Epstein’s death, it was also postmarked out of Northern Virginia, according to the FBI.

“The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s,” the agency said, and the letter “did not include his inmate number,” which is required for all outgoing mail from jails.

“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 said. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”

The latest update came mere hours after the Justice Department issued a statement saying Monday’s release contained “unfounded and false” claims, but were nevertheless being made public for full transparency.

They specifically raised questions about the validity of the alleged letter, in which Epstein appeared to make a dark joke about suicide, as well as an apparent reference to President Trump. Trump is not explicitly named in the note, but was president at the time the fake letter was sent.

“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter to Nassar reads in part. “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.”

It’s signed: “Yours, J. Epstein.”

In 2018, Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison after pleading guilty to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaulting young athletes under the guise of providing medical treatment while he worked for both USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. He was in prison at Florida’s USP Coleman at the time the letter was sent.

The note to Nassar — received by the jail and flagged for the FBI at the time — was also mentioned in another file, an FBI form dated July 31, 2020, with a request to “perform a handwriting analysis” in order to confirm the script belonged to Epstein.

It’s not clear if the FBI’s announcement on Tuesday was the result of a formal analysis. It’s also unclear who the handwriting belongs to and who sent the letter.

After releasing the latest trove of documents, the Justice Department on Tuesday emphasized that some of the material included “untrue and sensationalist” claims about Trump, which were previously submitted to the FBI ahead of 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,” read a notice from the DOJ. “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.”

The Justice Department was compelled by Congress in November to publicly release all of the Epstein files by Friday of last week. While they promised batches were coming, they warned it could take several weeks to roll out the full array of documents.

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