Jeffrey Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport on July 6, 2019 after returning from Paris, and he later asked, “Is this sex trafficking?” as he was driven to Manhattan. The epstein files account places his arrest, booking and death in a 35-day span that began with a federal warrant and ended with him found unresponsive in his cell.
Teterboro Airport Arrest
Late in the afternoon, about a dozen F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers gathered at the New Jersey airport after investigators received an email the day before saying a private jet would arrive at 5:20 p.m. and attaching an arrest warrant for Epstein. Customs agents boarded the plane to check the passports of Epstein and the plane’s two pilots, and an F.B.I. agent and a detective told him he was under arrest after he was escorted into the terminal.
Epstein was returning from Paris and had been making plans for a trip to his private island in the Caribbean and a documentary interview with Stephen K. Bannon. He sent Bannon one last message: “All canceled.” Bannon replied, “you r not coming in?”
Metropolitan Correctional Center
Shortly after 9 p.m. on July 6, 2019, Epstein was taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan and said, “Oh, this is bad,” as he was booked into federal custody. He asked, “Is this sex trafficking?” and “Is this about underage?” while he was driven to Manhattan, after federal prosecutors had quietly opened a new investigation into his activities in New York eight months earlier.
That investigation followed his 2008 plea deal, when he served 13 months in Palm Beach. Epstein had been indicted under seal on charges of trafficking minors for sex while he was abroad, and if found guilty he faced up to 45 years in prison. At the jail, employee Elba Torres described him as “distraught, sad and a little confused,” adding that he seemed “dazed and withdrawn.” She asked that someone from Psychology talk with him “to be on the safe side and prevent any suicidal thoughts.”
Aug. 10, 2019
Epstein was reduced to Bureau of Prisons number 76318-054, and 35 days later, in the early hours of Aug. 10, 2019, a guard found him unresponsive in his cell and hanging from a noose made from orange jail fabric. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
Congress later passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with bipartisan support in November. The sequence from arrest to death left the federal case unresolved in public debate, and the push for records moved into Congress after his death.
