The Dictatorship

The crucial details to pay attention to in Epstein’s purported suicide note

Published

1 month ago

May 8, 2026

May. 8, 2026, 12:28 PM EDT

This week a judge in the Southern District of New York unsealed what appears to be a suicide note from Jeffrey Epstein. The note is unsigned and as yet unauthenticated. Many have immediately declared it a fake. But I’ve spent hundreds of hours combing through the Epstein files as a journalist, and there is strong evidence for its authenticity.

First, though: How did this note only come to light now? The pivotal character in this story is Epstein’s original cellmate at the Manhattan Correctional Center, Nicholas Tartaglione. The ex-cop-turned-steroid-dealer and animal rescuer was awaiting trial for quadruple murder. In the early morning of July 23, 2019Tartaglione began banging on his cell door to summon the guards. They found Epstein unresponsive on the floor with a makeshift noose around his neck.

Under Trump, the Justice Department’s credibility is negligible.

Epstein initially claimed that his cellmate tried to strangle him. This was a dubious allegation, given that it was Tartaglione who yelled for help. Epstein may have made the accusation against his cellmate in order to keep himself off suicide watch and dodge a disciplinary write-up for self-harm. He almost immediately backtracked, however, and said he didn’t remember what happened. Epstein later assured prison staff that he didn’t feel threatened by Tartaglione and that he was happy to continue being housed with him. He was moved anyway.

Last year, Tartaglione”https://jessicareedkraus.substack.com/p/epsteins-cellmate-yes-he-killed-himself”>told podcaster Jessica Reed Kraus that he found the note tucked in a book shortly after Epstein’s suicide attempt and handed it over to his lawyer, who used it as evidence of good conduct in Tartaglione’s trial. Because the note was subject to attorney-client privilege, the judge in the case sealed the record. He unsealed it after lawyers for The New York Times successfully argued that Tartaglione nullified the privilege by describing the note on Kraus’ podcast.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan prosecuted Tartaglione, and many observers are rightly skeptical about anything involving Epstein and this Justice Department. Under President Donald Trump, the department’s credibility is negligible in light of its outrageous foot-dragging on releasing the Epstein files and its frantic attempts to shield the president from the fallout. The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was dispatched to interview Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell last summer. Thereafter, Maxwell was transferred to a cushy prison with yoga and puppies after she said she never saw Trump or Epstein do anything inappropriate.

While we can’t be sure the note is legit until the forensic document examiners weigh in, to me it’s vintage Epstein. For one thing, it starts with a rant about how prosecutors investigated him for “NOTHING!!!” The insistence that the charges against him were baseless and that the government was persecuting him — that’s Jeff, all right.

Furthermore, in poring through the Epstein files, I’ve gotten to know the sex offender’s writing better than I ever wanted to. The handwriting is very similar to a note found in Epstein’s cell after his death. Both notes include the all-caps phrase “NO FUN” and a liberal sprinkling of double exclamation marks.

Even the note’s most distinctive line strengthens the case for authenticity: “It is a treat to choose my time to say goodbye. Watcha want me to do? — Bust out cryin!!”

The latter sentence caught the attention of skeptics. “We’re talking about a highly educated individual,” Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke told host Laura Ingraham. “Would he say that? I’m not so certain.”

If the note was forged, the forger would have to know this remarkably obscure reference.

Actually, Epstein was a college dropout whose default email style can charitably be described as a half-literate stream of consciousness. Corke is picking up on something important, however: The words are from someone else. And the Justice Department’s Epstein files have the answer.

The files reveal that Epstein used the obscure “cryin” catchphrase in emails to his brother and his childhood friend. It’s an apparent reference to a Little Rascals short film from 1931, in which one of the Little Rascals, a Black child named Stymie, brushes off his friend Farina’s grief that he is about to be shipped off to an orphanage. In both emails, Epstein used it to chide the recipients for getting sentimental about something. It sounds alien to Epstein because it’s a Hollywood screenwriter’s take on African American Vernacular English. But if the note was forged, the forger would have to know this remarkably obscure reference.

And if it’s a forgery, who forged it? Tartaglione’s lawyer insists the note is real, but his client might have manufactured it as insurance against an attempted murder accusation from Epstein. Let’s be clear that Tartaglione’s credibility is negligible. He was convicted of four counts of murder. He maintains his innocence, even though the victims were kidnapped from his brother’s bar and the corpses were found in a mass grave on his property. We don’t know if Tartaglione ever saw Epstein’s handwriting, but even if he did and he’s a very proficient forger, that still wouldn’t explain how he’d know about Epstein’s Little Rascals fandom.

Some conspiracists insinuate that the federal government forged the note to help cover up the murder they were planning for Epstein. We know the current Justice Department couldn’t have forged the note because Tartaglione’s lawyer says he received it in 2019 and entered it into the legal record prior to Trump’s second term. If the government went to all the trouble of forging it years ago, why not use it at the time to quiet rumors that Epstein was murdered? If they forged it, they knew it existed and they could have gotten ahold of it anytime. The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General included Tartaglione as a source in its 2023 report on Epstein’s death. Yet it didn’t cite the note in the report. Instead, the note was produced by the trial judge after a New York Times reporter heard about it on a podcast and asked to have it unsealed. The timeline doesn’t fit the conspiratorial interpretation.

The timeline, phrasing and handwriting all point toward the authenticity of this note. But we can’t be 100% sure. What we can be sure of is that Epstein was a serial sex offender whose wealth allowed him to avoid accountability for years. Years after his death, a full accounting remains elusive. And his victims are still waiting for justice.

Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist in Brooklyn, New York. She writes a weekly column for The Editorial Board and is working on a book about conspiracy theories and American politics. Follow her on Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

Court denies request to immediately block DOJ ‘slush fund’

Published

6 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Court denies request to immediately block DOJ ‘slush fund’

Jun. 10, 2026, 6:14 PM EDT

A federal judge in Washington has denied a bid Wednesday brought by a watchdog group to immediately block the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund, for now choosing to trust the department’s assertions that it is not moving forward with the fund.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled immediately, denying Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the Department of Justice from taking steps to create the fund.

Throughout the 30-minute hearing, the DOJ reiterated that the administration was not moving forward with the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which seeks to compensate individuals who allege they have been politically targeted or victimized by the DOJ.

Andrew Block, the only lawyer present for the government, repeatedly cited Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2 congressional testimonyin which he said the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund.

Leon indicated he agreed with the DOJ’s position that the case appeared to be moot, saying he was not persuaded there was an issue for the court to decide regarding the creation of the fund. He issued a stern warning to the DOJ, saying, “Don’t play possum with this court!” — meaning he does not want to be deceived.

The plaintiffs argued Blanche’s testimony did not amount to an official cancellation. Nikhel Sus, CREW’s attorney, said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” or in other words, put it in writing. Sus said that was “highly unusual.” Leon responded, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.”

Leon asked the government twice why they would not just rescind the order that established the fund. Block responded, “I don’t know,” and pointed again to Blanche’s public statements about the fund’s future.

Both Leon and Sus raised the issue of Trump’s continued public defense of the fund. “It can still be an important issue and also not moving forward,” Block said. “That isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”

Although Leon rejected CREW’s bid for an immediate block, he indicated he is still considering its request for a longer-term block against the fund.

A block order from a separate federal judge in Virginia remains in effect until at least Friday.

Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Trump is accelerating our Social Security insolvency crisis

Published

6 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jun. 10, 2026, 5:50 PM EDT

The date when Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of money just got bumped up. The fund is now projected to empty in 2032according to a new report released by Social Security’s trustees.

The new depletion date isn’t an earth-shaking change — it’s only a quarter earlier than the estimate in last year’s report. But it illustrates how President Donald Trump’s policies are degrading a program he promised to never jeopardize — and accelerating an approaching crisis in how our government will assist the elderly and disabled.

The report names three factors that contributed to the earlier insolvency date. One is a declining fertility rate, but the other two drivers can be traced back to Trump: a drop in immigration into the country, and the “substantial effect” of the tax policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill he signed last summer.

Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities.

Reduced immigration during Trump’s second term — especially when coupled with a declining fertility rate — strains Social Security because the program is funded through payroll taxes. Those come out of people’s paychecks, and fewer workers supporting an aging population means the program receives less revenue. Indeed, Social Security already has been tapping its trust fund for the better part of the past two decades because the program’s costs have exceeded its cash income. And as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out last yearlast year’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich but a bust for the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.

To be clear, if the fund is depleted, Social Security won’t go belly up. Benefits will continue to be paid out, but there will be a large drop in the amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the “average monthly cut would total $500, which is more than what the average retired household spends on groceries each month.”

That would be a huge blow to the budgets of many older Americans. Social Security is a major source of income for most retirees, and roughly 40% of beneficiaries over the age of 65 rely on it for most of their income. And it would mark the destabilization of the sole source of retirement security for most Americans that is supposed to be insulated from ups and downs — unlike 401K plans. As the CBPP has pointed outSocial Security is “most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income that is not subject to investment risk or financial market fluctuations.”

Trump’s acceleration of the program’s insolvency comes atop his assaults on the program’s administrative capacities. His cuts to the Social Security Administration have left offices understaffedincreased wait timesand reduced quality of customer service.

Ultimately, Trump is exacerbating a colossal social safety net problem that predates him, and the trust fund will hit dire straits after he has left office. Democrats need to have clear plans for shoring up the program and making it robust for the future — which will require not being sheepish about taxes as a tool for renewing the social contract. And when Republicans try to claim that they, too, are champions of Social Security, all Democrats need to do is point to the truth.

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.

The Dictatorship

Wednesday’s Mini-Report, 6.10.26

Published

6 hours ago

June 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest from Northern Ireland: “The family of a man who lost an eye in a knife attack appealed for calm on Wednesday after the incident triggered a wave of anti-immigrant violence in Belfast overnight, with masked men burning families out of their homes and torching vehicles. The appeal ‌came as a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder and as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians in Northern Ireland condemned the violence by ‘masked thugs’ that had targeted ethnic minorities.”

* In related news: “The British government hit out at X owner Elon Musk Wednesday, accusing him of whipping up tensions online ahead of disorder in Belfast.”

* The tenuous state of a dubious ceasefire: “Trump said the U.S. is going to hit Iran ‘hard’ today when pressed by reporters in the Oval Office about his statement earlier that Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to reach a peace agreement. ‘Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard, resuming bombing,’ he said.”

* The latest casualty figures from Lebanon: “Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 3,666 people, including 131 healthcare workers, and injured more than 11,300 since the U.S. and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Lebanese health ministry reported yesterday.”

* The changing nature of modern warfare: “Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.”

* This seems like a reasonable request: “Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for acting director of national intelligence, submit to a full security check before assuming the post, including an examination of his financial holdings and foreign contacts.”

* Some market trends can’t be stopped despite the White House’s best efforts: “Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said.”

* A bizarre schedule for a nonemergency vanity project: “Federal officials are laying more groundwork to begin construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, sharing additional documents that detail the project’s scope and an aggressive timetable for potentially completing work before Trump’s term ends. According to National Park Service documents posted this month, the administration envisions 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round, in hopes of completing the project within two to three years.”

See you tomorrow.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”