Revealed: Jeffrey Epstein’s debate with Ken Starr about the Gospel

Attorney Ken Starr promoted Christianity to Jeffrey Epstein less than a year before the wealthy sex trafficker’s death in a jail cell, emails show.

Epstein criticized a Christian prayer for repentance as “forced speech” in a November 2018 discussion with Starr, the former president of Texas’ Baylor University who also helped negotiate a lenient plea deal for Epstein in 2007, according to documents the Department of Justice (DOJ) released Jan. 30. Epstein was found dead by hanging in a New York jail cell nine months later while under federal sex trafficking charges. Starr died in September 2022 due to complications from surgery.

“Great seeing you,” Epstein told Starr, apparently referencing a prior interaction.

“Having to accept christ seems to me in your words ‘forced speech’ … forcing acknowledgment of a belief,” Epstein said.

“Great point! At a basic level, the acceptance of Christ must be voluntary,” Starr wrote back. “It’s an invitation. No forced acknowledgments, conversions etc., as in the bad old days. Rather, the invitation is extended, warmly and lovingly.”

Epstein replied with a rebuttal that quoted the book of Romans: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

“‘Father in Heaven, I believe that Jesus died for my sins.’ And God will impart eternal life to your spirit… sounds like forced speech to me,” the late financier wrote.

“Again, fair point,” Starr wrote. “But as Billy Graham was wont to say, I don’t pretend to know the mind of God. So the great preacher for one would not agree with the proposition of unhappy consequences automatically flowing to those who did not believe.”

“As usual, very clever, he was great,” Epstein wrote back. “However the double negative [of] not bad to those that dont.. is not the same as [only] good to those that do.”

The emails offer a rare glimpse of Epstein’s thoughts on religion, with the sex offender suggesting former Trump strategist Steve Bannon should “learn” from Starr when they next meet. Epstein also mocked philanthropist Bill Gates for believing “the ludicrous statement that every life is equal” in a 2013 email to another individual, calling Gates’ work “Catholicism at its worst.”

“I know this is a pesky theological issue, one that I struggle with,” Starr wrote back to Epstein. “Let’s talk it over with Steve. [c]hurch in New York it is.”

Ties between Bannon and Epstein were made public months ago, however, Bannon has not been tied to any crimes and called for a special prosecutor probe into the DOJ’s Epstein files.

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