CBS News reported exclusively that Epstein’s jailers falsified reports, suggesting they’d checked in on him when they really hadn’t. CBS News also reported that Epstein had a cellmate, but they had posted bond and Epstein was left alone in his cell. How convenient? Epstein was dead 1-2 hours before he was found.
Only one person in the last 40 years has been able to successfully commit suicide at this facility, yet this incredibly high-profile guy managed to get the job done? Is it me – or is this like an episode of The Rockford Files, where jailers are promised a big payday if they’ll look the other way? Follow these jailers and their relatives and their bank accounts and new cars.
Surveillance video reviewed after Epstein’s death shows guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center did not make some of the checks they claimed to have made in their logs, a source told the Associated Press. The New York Times reported, citing unnamed officials, that the guards fell asleep at some point and did not check on him for up to three hours.
This comes amid growing conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s death as he awaited trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors said he sexually abused dozens of young girls in his New York and Florida residences between 2002 and 2005, allegations that could have landed him behind bars for 45 years.
the New York Post reported that “Epstein was found hanging in his lower Manhattan jail cell with a bedsheet wrapped around his neck and secured to the top of a bunk bed. He had apparently killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself with the makeshift noose.”
Sometimes a suicide is just a suicide.
An autopsy on Epstein was conducted on Sunday. The city’s medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, has not released the preliminary results claiming her office requires additional information.
Prior to his death, Epstein had a cellmate who had been transferred out on Friday, “possibly for a court appearance or another appointment — and was not immediately replaced as required by protocol.” Investigators are looking into why he was not replaced.
The guards did not check on him for three hours, officials said. The disclosures came as the guards and the warden at the jail were removed. The attorney general, William P. Barr, on Monday ordered the Justice Department’s inspector general to look into how Mr. Epstein had managed to commit suicidewhile in custody and why he had been taken off a suicide watch 12 days earlier.
“We will get to the bottom of what happened,” Mr. Barr said.
The warden, Lamine N’Diaye, will be transferred to a Bureau of Prisons office in Philadelphia while the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s inspector general conduct inquiries. The Justice Department said in a statement that it might take additional punitive actions.
A source told the AP that “Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen is being briefed by the FBI every three hours” on updates from the investigation into Epstein’s suicide.
In the aftermath of Epstein’s apparent suicide, his alleged “recruiter” Ghislaine Maxwell now finds herself under the microscope.
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has vowed to continue the investigation into Epstein, who, at the time of his death, was in a New York facility awaiting trial on allegations he operated an underage sex trafficking ring. And even though Epstein is now firmly outside the grip of the criminal justice system, his alleged “co-conspirators” do not enjoy a similar reprieve.
Several of Epstein’s accusers have pointed to Maxwell as playing a pivotal role in enlisting his victims, according to thousands of pages of court documents unsealed on Friday — just hours before Epstein reportedly used his bedsheet to hang himself from a prison bunk — in relation to a 2015 defamation suit filed against Maxwell.
Those who say they’re victims of Epstein and other eyewitnesses to the events surrounding his alleged crimes, have testified Maxwell’s role was in arranging massages and sexual favors for Epstein and a circle of his high-profile associates.
But Maxwell allegedly played an even more direct role in the sex abuse on several occasions.
Maxwell and Epstein were accused of molesting two victims in 1996 but the claims — allegedly reported to the FBI — fell on deaf ears, according to an affidavit viewed by the Miami Herald.
Maxwell has not released any public statements since Epstein’s arrest in early July. No criminal charges have been brought against her and she has consistently and vehemently denied all allegations of misconduct.
He had apparently tried to commit suicide once before, on July 23, shortly after he was denied bail, which resulted in him being placed on suicide watch, prison officials familiar with the incident have said.
The New York Post reported on Monday that Epstein “apparently killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself with the makeshift noose, a law enforcement source said Monday,” adding that he “was ‘unresponsive’ when he was discovered in his cell in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday.”
Republican Senator Ben Sasse (NE) urged Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday to “rip up” a 2008 non-prosecution agreement involving Epstein which protected alleged co-conspirators in the case.
“Too many of Epstein’s secrets have gone to the grave with him, and the Department must not allow his death to be one last sweetheart deal for his co-conspirators, Sasse wrote in a letter to Barr. “The victims of Epstein’s international sex trafficking ring deserve justice. In order to bring Epstein’s co-conspirators to justice, the Department of Justice should rip up the non-prosecution, non-investigation agreement entered into by Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida in 2008.”
“As documented in reporting by The Miami Herald, despite preparing a 53-page indictment, federal prosecutors instead entered into an agreement with Epstein that offered immunity to him, four named co-conspirators, and ‘any potential co-conspirators’ from federal charges, with Epstein agreeing to plead guilty to state charges that gave him a slap-on-the-wrist sentence that went largely unenforced,” Sasse continued. “This deal ‘essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.'”
“These problems run far beyond those identified by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which ruled that federal prosecutors violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by hiding the terms of the deal from the women and girls that Epstein raped and exploited until after it was entered,” Sasse added. “The idea that wealth and connections can buy injustice — the only plausible explanation for such pathetically soft terms for a serial child rapist at the heart of a massive international criminal enterprise — is wholly and completely inconsistent with the basic notions of fairness and equality that undergird the rule of law enshrined in our Constitution. Moreover, the notion that one individual’s plea could shield a whole class of potential co-conspirators of uncertain size and identity from legal liability would — if treated as enforceable — pioneer a new model for one fall guy to shield all other members of a criminal enterprise from accountability to the law.”
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