June 27, 2023

"No physical evidence supported any of the many conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s death, [Inspector General Michael] Horowitz concluded..."

"... and none of the video captured from the cameras that were recording showed any indication of anyone else in the cell. Investigators probed for possible money changing hands involving guards but found no evidence of that, either. The workers assigned to guard Epstein were sleeping and shopping online instead of checking on him every 30 minutes as required, prosecutors said. Nova Noel and Michael Thomas admitted lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made the checks but avoided prison time under a deal with prosecutors...."

68 comments:

gilbar said...

and none of the video captured from the cameras that were recording showed any indication of anyone else in the cell.

which is WHY, they left THOSE cameras; and disabled the others.. You know, the ones that DID show

Sebastian said...

Hey, Horowitz, here's a bigger question for you: what about the clients? If Epstein and Maxwell are criminal scum, and systematically abused girls/women, whom did they abuse them for? Who are they, and what happened to them?

Enigma said...

It's too bad the Justice Department can't be trusted by anyone with half a brain...

What does Epstein associate President Bill Clinton have to say?

RideSpaceMountain said...

Epstein was a spook. A well-financed, very well-connected spook. So is Maxwell, but she was the operation's subordinate. High-level spooks prefer different methods but can and are trained to kill themselves with a paperclip if they have to.

This isn't an either/or situation. Embrace the possibility of both/and.

gspencer said...

And it is merely coincidental that information which had been possessed only by Epstein and which would be embarrassing to some wealthy powerful people is now no longer available.

Narayanan said...

so this is like babysitter bf visits and baby dies suddenly!

wendybar said...

Of course not. Especially since it would involve the corrupt Politicians, judges, and all the other famous Progressives. Again, they are bullshitting the American people. Now, tell us what REALLY happened to Seth Rich. The Deep State is good at covering their asses.

mccullough said...

Who gave Epstein the “excess linen”?

Who knew the cameras didn’t record?

I believe the federal government is totally incompetent so I think it’s likely Epstein killed himself.

But the incompetence is so bad that it’s actually comforting that so many believe it was a conspiracy. That would mean the federal government is evil, which isn’t as troubling as it being run and staffed by fucking fools.

mikee said...

A suicide watch shouldn't be a lookie lookie every 30 minutes, it should be a person sitting in a chair outside the cell, or a person with a constant video monitor on the cell and inmate. Is amazement at what must be either incredible incompetence ormalign intent a conspiracy theory?

Why, when my pants are wet and smell of urine, do the officials keep telling me it rained?

Leland said...

Fine then. Release the client list.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Well, gosh, once the corrupt officials arranged to get rid of all teh physical evidence, there was no physical evidence left to prove that he was murdered!

So, some questions for the "esteemed investigator":

1: Was Epstein considered a "suicide risk"? Why yes he was
2: Were there a lot of politically powerful and connected people who would be happier if he was dead? Why yes, there were
3: If the prison officials were honest, what would they have done to make sure prisoner Epstein didn't die?
4: Were all those things done?
No, they weren't?
5: Were the people responsible for not doing those things all fired, and prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter?
No, they weren't?

Gee, does that perhaps indicate to you that "the fix was in"?

Nop? You "see nothing, nothing!"?

Thank you for establishing your corruption "Inspector General" Michael Horowitz

phantommut said...

Pull the other one. It has bells.

Aggie said...

There sure as hell was misconduct involved, and Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself.

Gusty Winds said...

"... and none of the video captured from the cameras that were recording showed any indication of anyone else in the cell.

If this statement is true (which it's not) then they have video footage of Epstein killing himself, no???

Humperdink said...

So DOJ-OIG blames the guards.

Of all the federal agencies for which I have zero trust, the DOJ leads the league. As I recall "Will" Bill Barr (hero of Ruby Ridge) was AG at the time of Epstein's demise. Slightly more trustworthy than Merrick the Great.

Butkus51 said...

NYT says it was a suicide

which means he was murdered.

Fool me twice....I think not.

Virgil Hilts said...

Seems obvious that Epstein wanted to kill himself, so all you really had to do was let him.

cassandra lite said...

So says Tommy Flanagan.

Jupiter said...

Wow. So Epstein did kill himself?

Gem Quincyite said...

What investigation did they use to mean "whitewash" before the Warren Commission?
You piss off enough powerful money grubbing people, the chances are going to get to 1 to 1 that you will get yourself killed.

Narr said...

At last our long national nightmare is over!

With this, surely all his powerful pals can finally rest easy.

Jim Gust said...

Obviously Epstein did not kill himself. We know that because we still haven't seen the client list, and the government went into overdrive to collect and destroy the evidence of who the clients were.

Quite an elaborate coverup. With all the lying the government has been doing lately, one wonders why they even bother? They have to know that no one will believe this nonsense.

Michael K said...

So, his last words were not, "Hillary ! What are you doing here?"

Nah, I expects she contracts this stuff out. Like Seth Rich.

madAsHell said...

All these government reports including the Warren report are just political theater.

farmgirl said...

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Roger Sweeny said...

Thirty years ago I would have accepted this.

traditionalguy said...

No evidence is a narrative lie. The set up was 100% a faked death to extract the asset.

Eva Marie said...

Death by excess linens?They don’t even bother making it believable anymore.

baghdadbob said...

Bill Barr's father hired Epstein to teach math to children at the very elite Dalton School. It was Epstein's first real job, and no, he didn't have a college degree. Bill Barr, of course, was AG when Epstein didn't kill himself.

Funny how almost everyone powerful in Government, NGOs, Big Law, media and Academia is related to, married to, or sleeping with someone else powerful in Government, NGOs, Big Law, media and Academia. It's almost as if there are only 1,000 or so "qualified" families outside of the non-media private sector.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

the cameras turned off was just a happy coincidence. Merrick+Democracy!!

Jaq said...

They are not lying to you about anything else, either.

Did he publish the autopsy photos? I am curious what kind of marks a tied up bedsheet makes when you drop from a bedpost. If the photos are public and match the story, ok,

We will never see Vince Foster’s photos either, though some who claim to have seen them say that they do not match the story.

Jupiter said...

"You piss off enough powerful money grubbing people, the chances are going to get to 1 to 1 that you will get yourself killed."

No no! That you will kill yourself.

Clyde said...

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I trust nothing coming from the government at this point.

walter said...

"Published Jan. 9, 2020Updated May 21, 2021
Word first surfaced recently that a video recording made outside of Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan jail cell when he first attempted — and failed — to kill himself last summer was missing, even possibly destroyed.
Within a day, though, the jailhouse video turned up, quieting conspiracy theories about Mr. Epstein’s death in a later suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Prosecutors said the jail’s staff had confirmed the video had been saved.
But on Thursday, the saga of the missing-then-found video took yet another twist when prosecutors revealed that the recording was gone after all. The jail, it turned out, had preserved video from the wrong jail tier, and as a result, the government said, the footage from outside Mr. Epstein’s cell no longer existed."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-video-suicide.html

Jaq said...

"Seems obvious that Epstein wanted to kill himself, so all you really had to do was let him."

Obvious to whom? He had powerful friends, or at least believed that he did. His lawyer said that he was in a fighting mood. Way too many things went "wrong" to provide a tiny window when he could have decided on his own to do it and he just somehow manage to hit that exact moment, drat the luck!

Big Mike said...

Have they thought about waterboarding the guards?

walter said...

"Epstein, the disgraced financier who was facing federal sex-trafficking charges, was placed under suicide watch after he was found in a fetal position with marks around his neck inside the cell he was sharing with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former upstate New York police officer facing quadruple murder charges.
The incident at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) was being investigated as a possible suicide attempt, assault or ruse by Epstein to get himself transferred to a different facility after he was denied bail on the sex-trafficking charges, officials said at the time.
<
Federal prison officials have released no information on the July 23 incident. Prison experts said the decision to take Epstein off suicide watch, where he would have been placed in a special cell and observed on a round-the-clock basis, would have been more appropriate if the incident was determined to be an assault as opposed to an attempt on his own life.
(?!!)
"What this means is that whatever happened to Epstein was inflicted on himself," said Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at four federal facilities. "It looks like a pretty straightforward case of someone who wanted to die."
Lindsay said the "prudent, safe decision" would have been to keep him on suicide watch.
"Gosh, if I were him I'd want to be dead and I'm sure there are a multitude of people that would have wanted him to be dead," Lindsay said. "It's corrections 101."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/jeffrey-epstein-s-former-cellmate-cleared-wrongdoing-incident-preceded-his-n1043341



"In 2015, he suspected that a man named Martin Luna had stolen money from him.
On April 11 of the following year, Mr. Tartaglione lured Mr. Luna to a bar in order to confront him, prosecutors said. Not knowing it was a trap, Mr. Luna brought with him his nephews Miguel Luna and Urbano Santiago and a family friend, Hector Gutierrez.
“What occurred next could only be described as pure terror,” Mr. Williams said.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Tartaglione tortured Mr. Luna and forced one of his nephews to watch as he strangled him with a zip tie. He and two associates then took the other men to the woods where they shot them and buried them in a mass grave.
Mr. Tartaglione, of Otisville, N.Y., was arrested in December 2016. As the authorities continued their investigation, one of his accomplices killed himself. That man, Gerard Benderoth, who was also a retired police officer and bodybuilder, was pulled over by F.B.I. agents and local police officers in Haverstraw, N.Y., in March 2017. They were hoping to get him to cooperate in the inquiry, but he shot himself before they reached the car."
<
After his arrest, Mr. Tartaglione shared a cell for a time with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier jailed on sex trafficking charges. Mr. Tartaglione alerted guards to a suicide attempt by Mr. Epstein in 2019, his lawyer said at the time.

After that incident, Mr. Epstein accused Mr. Tartaglione of assaulting him, a charge that Mr. Tartaglione denied. A prison official said at the time that Mr. Epstein’s story appeared to be an attempt to avoid being put on suicide watch. He killed himself less than a month later."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/nyregion/briarcliff-manor-police-officer-murder.html

alanc709 said...

The libs didn't get this right, you know. In Stalin's USA, Epstein's estate would have been billed for the use of the linen.

Jaq said...

Isn't this the same outfit that didn't see anything wrong with immediately cleaning John Connolly's suit, and washing the limo that JFK was killed in, and right away having all of the bullet holes fixed and the whole car restored to shiny new?

There was nothing funny about that assassination at all. And the best part? They guy who handed the Warren Commission, Jerry Ford, got to be President after the FBI took down Nixon for about a hundredth of what Obama is known to have done.

We live in a great country!

Jaq said...

The Democrats have seized power. More like the oligarchs have seized power, through the Democrats.

Robert Marshall said...

The guards who failed to protect the prisoner (who knew where all the secrets were buried), and then lied about it somehow "avoided prison time under a deal with prosecutors."

Oh, right! The same 'Justice' Department that just gave Hunter Biden a get-out-of-jail card, too. Somehow, the 'who benefits' question always comes back with the same answer, the establishment elite.

Tank said...

So that's the official story and we can rule it out.

Freeman Hunt said...

It isn't a "conspiracy theory" to say that he might not have killed himself. That is not an accurate use of the term. Prison killings are not uncommon, a great number of people wanted this person dead, and all elements which would show beyond doubt that he killed himself are (conveniently?) absent. It's perfectly logical and not far-fetched to be open to the possibility that he was murdered.

rcocean said...

We're supposed to believe ALL these things happening at once was just a coicidence:

1) Epstein is NOT given a roommate - even though he was labeled a suicide risk
2) He's given excess Linen
3) Guards "Forget" to check his cell - even though required
4) Cameras stop working - and no one cares
5) Guards falsify logs

Amazing. Epstein sure was.....lucky.

RigelDog said...

You know, in Ancient Rome if a rival wanted you dead, they would sometimes give you some excess linens and let you take the honorable way out.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

What Freeman H said.

Goldenpause said...

Executive summary: Mistakes were made. Nobody’s perfect. Time to move on. Too bad about the dead guy.

Jaq said...

In high school, I had a summer job working at a laundry that did the bedding for the local prison, Operated a mangle with a bunch of nice ladies. Anyway, the sheets used to come to us tied together a lot of times, which I always thought was pretty funny, and part of my job was to untie them.

PM said...

Whew, that's a relief. I thought some rich fuckers had him killed.

Big Mike said...

The giveaway is that Michael Horowitz calls the belief that Epstein was murdered a “conspiracy theory.” To a good first approximation, for the past four years everything that government officials have labeled a “conspiracy theory” has turned out to be 100% true. (Well, to be fair, some of them are only 98% true.)

BTW, has anyone checked the bank accounts of Michael Horowitz and the members of his investigation team for signs of bribery? Asking for a friend.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Mary Beth said...

He identified 13 employees with performance failures and recommended possible criminal charges against four workers. Only the two workers assigned to guard Epstein the night he died were charged, avoiding jail time in a plea deal after admitting to falsifying logs.

Okay, so the guards were understaffed and overworked. (I don't really think that is a valid excuse. They were getting paid overtime to shop online and nap.) Anyone at higher, decision-making levels have any responsibility for this? Any consequences for them? If it's not the fault of the people at the first level - the guards, then go up a level to their supervisors and keep going up until someone is held accountable in a real and meaningful way. Otherwise it all just seems like BS.

I wonder what benefit the prosecutors got from letting the guards have a plea deal.

Hassayamper said...

If it turned out that Epstein is actually alive and well and banging 16 year old Ukrainian girls in a beachfront villa in Tel Aviv, after some of the best plastic surgery money can buy, I would not find it the least bit surprising. That’s how little I think of our ruling class. There’s nothing I learned about the debauchery and corruption of the late Roman republic, and the empire that succeeded it, that is not being recapitulated today. We may be even worse. If our biggest cities were annihilated in nuclear hellfire, starting with DC, it’s no more than we deserve. It might even be a long-term improvement. Compare Hiroshima to Detroit.

Hassayamper said...

If it turned out that Epstein is actually alive and well and banging 16 year old Ukrainian girls in a beachfront villa in Tel Aviv, after some of the best plastic surgery money can buy, I would not find it the least bit surprising. That’s how little I think of our ruling class. There’s nothing I learned about the debauchery and corruption of the late Roman republic, and the empire that succeeded it, that is not being recapitulated today. We may be even worse. If our biggest cities were annihilated in nuclear hellfire, starting with DC, it’s no more than we deserve. It might even be a long-term improvement. Compare Hiroshima to Detroit.

Hassayamper said...

If it turned out that Epstein is actually alive and well and banging 16 year old Ukrainian girls in a beachfront villa in Tel Aviv, after some of the best plastic surgery money can buy, I would not find it the least bit surprising. That’s how little I think of our ruling class. There’s nothing I learned about the debauchery and corruption of the late Roman republic, and the empire that succeeded it, that is not being recapitulated today. We may be even worse. If our biggest cities were annihilated in nuclear hellfire, starting with DC, it’s no more than we deserve. It might even be a long-term improvement. Compare Hiroshima to Detroit.

Mutaman said...

tim in vermont said...

"after the FBI took down Nixon for about a hundredth of what Obama is known to have done."

What planet are you living on?

Mutaman said...

52 comments and raising and (except for Walter's post), not one cited fact. The Know Nothings don't like facts.

Mutaman said...

tim in vermont
"Isn't this the same outfit that didn't see anything wrong with immediately cleaning John Connolly's suit"


Tiny Tim might be onto something here. In Bugliosi's 1600 page book, Reclaiming History, in which the great prosecutor shot down every dopey conspiracy theory imaginable, he cleverly avoided the cleaning of Connelly's suit.

Hassayamper said...

If it turned out that Epstein is actually alive and well and banging 16 year old Ukrainian girls in a beachfront villa in Tel Aviv, after some of the best plastic surgery money can buy, I would not find it the least bit surprising. That’s how little I think of our ruling class. There’s nothing I learned about the debauchery and corruption of the late Roman republic, and the empire that succeeded it, that is not being recapitulated today. We may be even worse. If our biggest cities were annihilated in nuclear hellfire, starting with DC, it’s no more than we deserve. It might even be a long-term improvement. Compare Hiroshima to Detroit.

M said...

When the powers that be are on charge of all the evidence it says what they want it to say. Of course. The Democrats long ago defeated themselves of any honor, pushing ever leftward is the only thing they care about. I’m sure the pedo pimp who had dirt on lots of powerful people was a real boon to the Left.

Nancy Reyes said...

Now do the Sherman dual suicide investigation.
Their children were the ones who pressured the government to reopen the case, so it is now considered a homicide, although no one has been accused of being behind the crime so far...

Moondawggie said...

So there is no visual evidence that killers got access to Epstein.

And there is no visual evidence of him committing suicide while being ignored by corrupt, incompetent guards.

Who you gonna believe? The US DOJ or the conspiracy theorists? They both suck.

So we're still stuck with the reality that no one knows what really happened.

But lots of people ask, "Qui bono?"

And a lot of rich, well connected, politically important personages hate that question.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Someday Donald Trump will be found dead in his prison cell, and I won't be surprised to find out those two guards were assigned to look after him.

Rusty said...

"I wonder what benefit the prosecutors got from letting the guards have a plea deal."
They get not having those guys cross examined in open court.

Mutaman said...
"52 comments and raising and (except for Walter's post), not one cited fact. The Know Nothings don't like facts."
That's what I like about you Mutaman. We're never in any danger of you bringing anything intelligent.

A lot of facts have been mentioned. They are being disputed. That is what intelligent people do. Now run along.

Jaq said...

"What planet are you living on?"

Wasn't Watergate about spying on political opponents? You sure are careful about "curating" your news sources. That way it increases your certainty that you are right, without the drudgery of having to think about it.

Why did they destroy the evidence of the suit and the car? I assume you read all 1600 pages that you cite.

Jaq said...

I get it now. Breaking a lock to open a file to spy on a presidential campaign is a heinous crime, but lying to a FISA judge in order to abuse the Patriot Act, in order to spy on the other campaign, that's A-OK.

Curious George said...

"BTW, has anyone checked the bank accounts of Michael Horowitz and the members of his investigation team for signs of bribery? Asking for a friend."

They didn't have to bribe them. They know what's in store for them if they don't play ball.

Michael K said...

< Blogger Mutaman said...

tim in vermont said...

"after the FBI took down Nixon for about a hundredth of what Obama is known to have done."

What planet are you living on?


Not yours. That's for sure. Are you sure you are not a bot ?

Mutaman said...

tim in vermont said...

"What planet are you living on?"

"Wasn't Watergate about spying on political opponents? "

Spying, and breaking into their psychiatrist's offices, among other things.