The 7-Page Letter France Sent to America About Brunel. It Was Never Answered.

Buried in the 2.1 million documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act is a seven-page letter written in French on the letterhead of the République Française. It is not an email between socialites. It is not a flight manifest or a bank statement. It is a formal request from the criminal justice system of France to the criminal justice system of the United States, asking for help investigating Jean-Luc Brunel and unnamed others in connection with the sexual abuse of children.

The document, indexed as EFTA00077207, is dated July 8, 2020. Brunel was alive. He would be arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport five months later, in December 2020. He would be found hanging in his cell at La Santé prison on February 1, 2022, before ever standing trial.

The letter appears never to have produced a public result.

What the Document Contains

The request was issued by the Procureur de la République (Public Prosecutor) of the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris and addressed to "les autorités compétentes des États-Unis d'Amérique" through the Cour d'Appel de Paris.

It was filed under Section P4, the parquet des mineurs: the division of the Paris prosecutor's office that handles crimes against children.

The case reference is parquet n° 19 235 449. The investigation had been formally opened on August 30, 2019, weeks after Epstein's arrest in New York and days after his death.

The charges listed in the document are extensive:

Viol commis sur un mineur de 15 ans (rape of a minor under 15). Viol commis sur un mineur de plus de 15 ans (rape of a minor over 15). Viol (rape). Agression sexuelle imposée à un mineur de 15 ans (sexual assault on a minor under 15). Agression sexuelle sur un mineur de plus de 15 ans (sexual assault on a minor over 15). Agression sexuelle (sexual assault). Participation à une association de malfaiteurs en vue de la préparation d'un crime (participation in a criminal conspiracy to prepare a crime). Participation à une association de malfaiteurs en vue de la préparation d'un délit puni d'au moins 5 ans d'emprisonnement (participation in a criminal conspiracy to prepare an offense carrying at least five years' imprisonment).

The subject line of the request identifies the target as "Jean-Luc BRUNEL et tous autres" in connection with "l'affaire dite EPSTEIN." The phrase "tous autres" means "all others." France was not investigating Brunel alone. The scope was open-ended.

The Legal Framework

The request invokes the EU-U.S. mutual legal assistance agreement of June 25, 2003, which entered into force on February 1, 2010, and Article 14 of the France-U.S. mutual judicial assistance treaty of December 10, 1998. It asks for confidentiality without time limit, citing Article 11 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure, which governs the secrecy of investigations.

The document quotes the relevant articles of French criminal procedure at length, establishing the legal basis for the preliminary investigation and the authority of the prosecutor to direct police officers in conducting it. This level of procedural citation is standard for formal international requests and signals that the document was intended for U.S. courts or the Department of Justice, not for internal French use alone.

The Timeline Problem

The letter was sent on July 8, 2020. Jeffrey Epstein had been dead for nearly a year. Ghislaine Maxwell had been arrested in New Hampshire just six days earlier, on July 2, 2020. The U.S. was building its own case. Whether the DOJ responded to France's request, and what form that response took, is not established in the public record.

What is established is the outcome. Brunel was arrested in December 2020 on charges of rape of minors, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking. He died in custody in February 2022. The French investigation into his conduct was closed with a non-lieu (dismissal) following his death. The case file was shelved.

In February 2026, following the mass release of Epstein files, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced a "complete reanalysis" of the Brunel investigation file and opened two new framework investigations covering both sexual offenses and financial crimes linked to the Epstein network in France.

What It Means

The significance of EFTA00077207 is not what it reveals about Brunel. His crimes were well established before this document was written. The significance is what it reveals about the structure of international cooperation in the Epstein case.

France asked America for help. The request was filed by the division that protects children. It covered not just Brunel but "all others" connected to the affair. It cited charges ranging from the rape of children under 15 to organized criminal conspiracy. And it asked for confidentiality.

The document sat in the Epstein files for years before being released to the public in January 2026. During that time, Brunel died, the French investigation was dismissed, and the "all others" referenced in the letter were never publicly identified.

Fifteen new testimonies from possible French victims have since reached the association Innocence en Danger, whose president Homayra Sellier has called for the investigation to be reopened. Three new cases have been referred to the Paris prosecutor: diplomat Fabrice Aidan, model scout Daniel Siad, and conductor Frédéric Chaslin. The Parquet National Financier has opened a separate probe into Jack Lang and Caroline Lang for money laundering.

The seven-page letter suggests that France knew, as early as 2020, that the Epstein affair on French soil extended well beyond one modeling agent.

Source Documents

• EFTA00077207: Formal demande d'entraide pénale internationale from the Procureur de la République, Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris, Section P4 (parquet des mineurs), dated July 8, 2020. Case reference: parquet n° 19 235 449. 19,637 characters. 7 pages. Filed under the EU-U.S. Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement of 2003 and France-U.S. Treaty of 1998, Article 14.