BEN SASSE “
NEBRASKA INTELLIGENCE
JUDICIARY
Wnited States Senate oo
WASHINGTON, DC 20510
November 13, 2019
Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer
Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
U.S. Department of Justice
320 First Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20534
Dear Director Sawyer,
(On Saturday August 10, 2019, the day that serial child rapist and wealthy financier
Jeflrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, I wrote to Attorney General Barr expressing my anger
that the Department of Justice failed.
Epstein’s death makes it significantly harder to prosecute his co-conspirators. Wealthy
and powerful men raped innocent children, and it is an outrage that so much of the evidence of
these crimes died with Epstein while in your agency’s custody.
In my letter that morning, I asked the Attorney General several initial questions —about
the circumstances of Epstein's custody after his previous apparent suicide attempts, about
whether appropriate investigations had been triggered, and whether steps were being taken to
preserve evidence. These were very basic and urgent questions, and Americans deserve answers
to them,
‘That day, in a public statement, Attorney General Barr confirmed the launch of the
Department's investigations, and on September 5, I received a letter from Assistant Attorney
General Stephen Boyd containing a two-sentence acknowledgement that Epstein had been placed
‘on and later removed ftom suicide watch, information which had been reported by the media on
August 23. Beyond these short statements, the Department has not been forthcoming or
responsive, with the Department's claiming that it “is significantly limited in the amount of
information [it] can release.”
These and so many other questions deserve answers. And yet, months later, we're still in
the dark about what happened to Epstein.
Next week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an oversight hearing of the Bureau
of Prisons. Epstein’s death in custody has ignited a crisis of public trust in your agency and
exacerbated the erosion of trust that the American people have in our institutions of republican
self-government more broadly. To pretend like this issue, which is by far the public's top
concern with your agency, won't be a significant focus of attention at this hearing is naive—to
KEARNEY OFFICE
uaa orrice scorrsawure orice -nasunaron oc oricethe point of being laughable. And while there may be particular details that you cannot yet
answer, deflecting difficult questions won't cut it.
Your predecessor, Hugh Hurwitz, was reassigned in the wake of this scandal. The
American people are now looking to you for a public account of what went wrong. Please come
prepared to give some substantial answers.
Sincerely,
“Bon Sasea_
Ben Sasse
US. Senator