In the immediate wake of news from New York City officials Saturday morning that disgraced billionaire and high-profile political donor Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell overnight, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez indicated it will be up to lawmakers and others to demand a full accounting of what happened to the man accused of operating a sophisticated sex trafficking ring that catered to the nation’s rich and powerful.

“We need answers,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Lots of them.”

Shortly after her tweet, Ocasio-Cortez re-tweeted a comment by former prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti—an indication of some of her concerns.

“Epstein’s suicide,” noted Mariotti, “ends the criminal case against him because no one else was charged in the indictment.”

With many high-powered men—including President Donald Trump, former president Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, and Harvard attorney Alan Dershowitz—implicated or accused over the years of having ties to Epstein, attending his parties, or even participating in his alleged sex trafficking ring, news of his death immediately sparked conspiracy theories about his demise.

Questions surrounding both the manner of Epstein’s death and the looming questions about the reach of his alleged sex trafficking operation immediately swirled as the news of the apparent suicide broke.

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