Kash Patel and Dan Bongino say that Epstein committed suicide
Well, well, well:
Disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison in 2019, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino reaffirmed Sunday, countering conspiracy theories that have lingered since Epstein died while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
“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,” Patel told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding that those who believe something nefarious happened “have a right to their opinion.”
“I have seen the whole file. He killed himself,” Bongino added in their joint interview at the FBI’s Hoover Building.
Of course, this won’t put to rest the very popular notion that Epstein did not kill himself. There’s no question his death was suspicious and that he was not properly monitored. The failure of the video surveillance system only intensified the suspicions that his death was not the result of suicide.
However, I’ve written many posts on this subject already, and I have always leaned somewhat towards the idea that Epstein was a suicide. My reasons are explained at length in those posts. If you’re interested, please take a look at this, this, this, and this.
I fully expect most people to disagree with me on this. But Patel and Bongino do not, and they are far more unequivocal in their statements about the chances of his suicide than I am – in fact, their statements are definitive. Plus, they’ve seen a great deal more about the case than I have, or than almost anyone has.
Hypothetical:
They told Epstein if he didn’t kill himself, they would torture him.
They drugged the guards and disabled the cameras.
He killed himself.
This pair certainly have more credibility than Wm. Barr and his minions, but I am not persuaded.
“To be fair, there’s little difference between pulling the trigger yourself and handing a loaded gun to someone you know intends to use it.
Epstein was taken off suicide watch, left alone in his cell, and not properly monitored. Given those lapses, it’s reasonable to say that they were enabling a murder by suicide.” – DateRepublican (small r) on X
Although government officials more or less begged to be accused of covering up a murder with a purported suicide, I’ve never been convinced either way. Too much lying, too difficult to check. If Patel and Bongino are satisfied that an investigation had a reasonable chance of getting to the truth, I’m not inclined to quarrel with them. I definitely wouldn’t expect them to lie, so the only question in my mind is whether they could be mistaken.
I suspect if they’d been able to take a scalp on this one, they’d have gone for it.
The Uniparty and the Deep State have only themselves to blame for the American people no longer being willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. A notorious inmate – who a lot of powerful people did not mind seeing dead, by the way – died under questionable circumstances and a lot of people are not willing to accept the “official” cause of death.
I’m inclined to the theory of “assisted suicide,” and am not alone in that, although I can’t remember now where I saw the most persuasive (IMO) explanation (Bob and Augmentin gave the short versions):
prosecutors or detectives “explained” to him what a full-scale interrogation would encompass, the evidence against him (whatever that may have been relating to other people, the charges against him has been relatively solid), and the generally-known fate of child molesters in prison (although I’m not sure that’s still a “thing” given the possible progression of convicts’ crimes in the last few decades).
Subtly indicate that no one will be inclined to interfere this time (he had tried once before IRC0), and the evidence (against him) would not follow him to prison or elsewhere (should he miraculously escape conviction), and that trying to take down his clients (revenge?) was a non-starter (for obvious reasons).
The motive would be self-serving for the Biden DOJ & friends.
Another conviction without any victims or perpetrators would probably be more than the public, left and right, would be willing to accept.*
Naming Epstein’s “guests at trial,” however, was politically and socially unacceptable, just as with Maxwell.
If Epstein is out of the picture (completely), then it’s a win-win on both those points.
It seems pretty clear that any truly incriminating material against his guests has either been removed from the files already, or is inconclusive, as shown in the releases by AG Bondi.** If anything is left, I don’t know which way Patel and Bongino would jump with it. I’m inclined to give them the benefit-of-the-doubt, because they owe nothing to most of the generally alleged suspects, but would they cover up for someone in their own orbits?
Who knows?
* https://thenewneo.com/2021/12/30/ghislaine-maxwell-found-guilty-in-the-epstein-case/
“I have no trouble believing that Maxwell is every bit as evil as her portrayal in this trial and in the civil suits. But for her, and for any other person so accused, I’d want to know a lot more information than seems readily available. In addition, of course, there’s the question of the protection of the names of the adult men who participated in the abuse of these minor girls. Draw your own conclusions there.”
Which we proceeded to do at Neo’s posts.
** https://thenewneo.com/2025/02/27/the-epstein-files/
“If the authorities do have better evidence than that, the proper way to deal with it is to prosecute.
You might believe that is naive of me and that obviously tons of smoking-gun evidence is being covered up. But I just don’t think so. Of course, I could be wrong. But until I see something that changes my mind, my best guess is that such a list says nothing about guilt and that the government lacks good enough evidence to prosecute….In fact, if there was such evidence and especially if it implicated powerful people, it probably would have been destroyed.”
@ Augmentin, quoting Data Republican > “To be fair, there’s little difference between pulling the trigger yourself and handing a loaded gun to someone you know intends to use it.”
Actually, there is, so long as you maintain plausible deniability as to deliberately providing the weapon. In fact, that used to be the solution of choice, when the perpetrator could be convinced that he owed it to his family, for social and financial reasons, to take himself off without a trial.
The criminal was very seldom a woman, in that case. I don’t remember ever reading about one.
We are watching the PBS miniseries from 1972 of the Peter Wimsey detective stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (set in between-war Britain), and the conclusion of the episode we just finished has exactly that conclusion (“The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.”
If memory serves, Nero Wolfe made use of the method a few times as well (in early stories from the 1930s and 1940s).
It was clearly not unheard of. Everyone knew why the person had committed suicide, of course, and the police seldom (if ever) made a fuss.
They probably would not be so “understanding” these days.
Neo: can you contribute some comment explaining why Epstein — by no means near the end of his means while in jail — would give up in this way? He seems to have spent decades operating above & beyond the law. Suicide seems a tough decision to make at the point where he was. But who knows?
Hey that almost distracted me for 2 seconds, before I remembered that the list of Epstein’s Clients still has not been released, and also that Patel and Bongino musta, kinda, ya know, forgotten to provide us with a progress report and a new estimate of when it will be released. Funny, that.
I’m also still waiting patiently for the release of the January 6th surveillance tapes that were released a long time ago to Fox News, were partly up for a couple of days, and then vanished into thin air. Hey ! What happened to all those tapes, did they get locked up in the Epstein storage locker or what ?
A guy could lose a lot of faith in a short period of time, say less than 2 years.
Why would we trust those files?
Yeah this stinks. Moreover it’s besides the point. “Epstein didn’t kill himself.”he wasn’t in the position to do so. Even if the choice to commit suicide was something he willingly chose and he was the one to actually end his vital life signs, he could not have done it alone. At the absolute minimum we have complete and unconscionable lack of diligence and attention to duty in keeping an eye on him to prevent him from committing Game End.
And I don’t think that is anywhere near the limit of it.
Augmentin and AesopFan have it right.
There were so many influential, powerful people who went to Pedo Island, New Mexico and his NYC digs that you will never see the list from the government. Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister of Israel and total
A$$wipe, and so many other disgusting creatures.
I mean Maxwell is in prison. If Trump were serious and he’s not one bit, he let’s her know she gets a pardon and The Witness protection Program if she names names. She’s 63 and has 17 more years to go.
Who hired Epstein to be a teacher to young people at the The Dalton School @ 89th Street that I used walk by every day on the way to my school on 74th Street in Manhattan.
You said Bill Barr’s Father? Yup.
“set up to kill himself” works. Thing is, there’s supposed to be a procedure for deciding who gets off suicide watch status. It’s supposed to pick the guys who aren’t likely to suicide. Can’t always get it right, of course. But that has to coincide with guards effectively checking out without signing out and those two have to coincide with the cell-tier camera malfunctioning.
Do the math; enter your own values. But say the first procedure is wrong one time in five. So that’s one over five. That’s supposed to be… BY ACCIDENT. Then the guards thing, one time out of two. So that’s one over two. And the camera goes wrong HOW many times? One time in ten? So one over five times one over two times one over ten….Is that this thing needed a coincidence chance of one in one hundred?
Not exactly. It needed that chance to happen by accident. But it happened. So there are ninety-nine other possibilities, which are…not by accident.
Put your own numbers in and figure the thing out.
No firm ideas about whether or not Epstein killed himself, but there’s no pimps without johns, no dealers without users, no attorneys without clients.
I don’t understand how the evidence can be good enough to convict Epstein and Maxwell of trafficking but not good enough to even bring an indictment for whoever they trafficked to. A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich, can’t it?
To me it seems that no prosecutor in a position to do it wanted to. Not even resignations of prosecutors who want to but aren’t allowed to. And we don’t know the names of anyone making these decisions. It’s all in the passive voice.
@Richard Aubrey:Is that this thing needed a coincidence chance of one in one hundred?
Your probabilities would have to be independent. Once you have guards who are corrupt or incompetent or whatever, a lot of the probabilities you spell out are no longer independent.
Niketas:
You write:
The evidence involved trafficking to Epstein himself. I’ve written about this in several posts, one being this. You commented on that thread in a way that indicated you were aware that other cases were very weak, so I’m not sure I understand your question today. Does it rely on the concept of “trafficking”? Trafficking does not have to involve getting the girls to have sex with other people. You can view the charges against Epstein here.
John Galt III; Aggie:
Please see my opinion on the issue here.
If the probabilities are independent, whatever the resulting number, that’s more generous than presuming corruption. It’s like…one chance in a hundred it’s innocent.
However, early reports were that the place was run pretty well. That means corruption or incompetence were either absent or of minimal effect over time.
So skip the guards. The first procedure times the third. Still not a good number. And, while I have no idea how often the cameras malfunction on their own, I’d presume one which does frequently could be replaced without a contract activity similar to those discovered by DOGE. IOW, close to the last one’s screw up.
So procedure one is one over five and maybe more realistically, procedure three is one over one hundred.
And it happened to EPSTEIN, not some anonymous schlub nobody ever heard of. That chance was….? Not to mention that the dude was one some unknown but large number of influential people wanted quiet and, of those, a substantial portion could be seen as in a position to see it happens.
Okay, fallback position was that Epstein was set up to kill himself. And it was deliberate.
James S:
I don’t find it at all surprising that he might be strongly motivated to kill himself at that point.
First of all, he was 66 years old. He was facing an almost certain prospect of being in prison for the rest of his natural life and dying there. He’d already been in prison in Florida for about a year – as a result of a lenient plea deal. So he figured he’d dodged that bullet. But with the 2019 indictments he knew they meant business, unlike the first time. The party was completely and utterly over.
.
Who hired Epstein to be a teacher to young people at the The Dalton School @ 89th Street that I used walk by every day on the way to my school on 74th Street in Manhattan.
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What, you fancy Donald Barr recruited the 21 year old Epstein as a sleeper agent, and arranged for a cover as a math teacher at the Dalton School?
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The Dalton School has about 1,200 students, and, one would wager, about 120 faculty slots. Why do you fancy it was Barr who hired him rather than the head of the math department or the vice principal in charge of the secondary school (particularly since Barr was on his way out the door in the spring of 1974)?