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Top brass at the FBI has emphatically declared that notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide and that there is no evidence to suggest otherwise.
FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and director Kash Patel have both concluded Epstein took his own life in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
“I have reviewed the case. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. There’s no evidence in the case file indicating otherwise,” Bongino, a former conservative talk radio host, wrote on X.
“I’m not asking you to believe me, or not. I’m telling you what exists, and what doesn’t. If new evidence surfaces I’m happy to reevaluate.”
Epstein’s abrupt death in 2019 has long been subject to conspiracy theories and conjecture that malfeasance was at play in his demise. Many conspiracy theories suggested that some of the rich and famous clients Epstein served over the years may have been interested in offing him.
However, during a Senate hearing earlier this month, Patel made clear that he believed Epstein’s death to be a suicide and nothing more.
“Listen, they have a right to their opinion,” Patel told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” about skeptics of his assessment.
“As someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor, who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”
Bongino backed up Patel during a joint interview with Maria Bartiromo.
“He killed himself,” Bongino said. “I have seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
The pedophile financier had been found dead, with bedsheets around his neck in his jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, just over a month after his arrest.
On the day of his death, two guards fell asleep and did not check on him every 30 minutes as required, according to the New York Times. Cameras pointed at the hallway outside his cell also malfunctioned and had been broken previously, according to multiple reports.
Initially, a medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.
But then Epstein’s family hired forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who concluded that based on the evidence, a homicide was far more likely than a suicide.
Baden pointed to specific fractures in Epstein’s thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone that he claimed were more likely the result of strangulation. Other experts cast doubt on that assessment.
“I stand firmly behind our determination of the cause and manner of death for Mr. Epstein. The cause is hanging, the manner is suicide,” Dr. Barbara Sampson, New York City’s chief medical examiner from 2013 to 2021, shot back at the time.
Sampson had done the original autopsy on Epstein.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi released some documents about Epstein to MAGA influencers, most of which had previously been publicly divulged, leading to heavy criticism of the process.
Amid backlash, Bondi later claimed that the FBI was withholding information from her.
In their Fox interview, Patel and Bongino claimed that more revelations are on the horizon related to cases that have vexed MAGA world, including the FBI’s investigation of potential ties between the Trump campaign in 2016 to Russia and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“That’s how vindictive and vicious the former leadership structure here was. Not only did they bastardize the FISA process and lie to the American public. They withheld and hid documentation and put it in rooms where people weren’t supposed to look,” Patel said.
“And it’s a good thing we’re here now to clean it up, and you’re about to see a wave of transparency,” he added. “Just give us about a week or two.”
English (US)