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Sept. 18, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:44
Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?
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This video is a follow-up to my previous video, The Convenient Death of Jeffrey Epstein.
To understand the full context of this investigation, I would advise you watch that video first.
Jeffrey Epstein was an elite financier who in 2008 was convicted of sexually abusing child prostitutes.
He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and served 13 months of his sentence before being released, during which he was treated with remarkable leniency due to a plea deal negotiated with Alex Acosta, then US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
Epstein was arrested again by the FBI on the 6th of July 2019 on sex trafficking charges as one of his private planes arrived at Teterborough Airport in New Jersey.
He was apparently found unresponsive in his cell in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center on the 10th of August 2019, just over one month after his arrest.
Epstein's death appears to have been first announced on infamous image board 4chan.
38 minutes before the story was released by corporate media networks, in this case ABC News, a post appeared on 4chan that was titled, Jeffrey Epstein Dead, and read simply, Don't ask me how I know, but Epstein died an hour ago from hanging, cardiac arrest.
Screencap this.
ABC News first reported that Epstein was transported in cardiac arrest at 6.39am to New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Given the anonymous nature of 4chan, it's impossible to know whether this post was created by one of the medics called to help Epstein, but the technical language used seems to have been legitimate and the diagnosis was correct.
Authorities certainly took the post seriously, and an investigation had been opened and at the time of writing is still ongoing.
Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself before 6.30am on Saturday the 10th of August when he was discovered using one of his bedsheets that he had attached to the top of a set of bunk beds to use as a noose.
Epstein's autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office under the authority of Dr. Barbara Sampson, the chief medical examiner.
Epstein's legal team also hired the venerable celebrity pathologist Michael Baden, who in the long course of his career had investigated the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, identified the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Joseph Mengele, and testified as a defense witness for O.J. Simpson among numerous others.
On the 11th of August, NBC News reported that the preliminary autopsy had been completed.
The New York City Medical Examiner's Office said Sunday that it had completed an autopsy of the financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but that it needed more information before determining the cause of death.
On the 15th of August, the Washington Post reported that it had spoken to two anonymous sources who were quote familiar with the findings who said that Sampson's office is seeking additional information on Epstein's condition in the hours before his death.
That could include video evidence of the jail hallways, which may establish whether anyone entered Epstein's cell during the night he died, results of a toxicology screening to determine if there was any unusual substance in his body, and interviews with guards and inmates who were near his cell.
The autopsy showed that several of the bones in Epstein's throat had been broken, including the hyoid bone.
According to statistical data and expert opinion, a broken hyoid bone is more consistent with strangulation than by hanging.
According to Jonathan L. Arden, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, if, hypothetically, the hyoid bone is broken, that would generally raise questions about strangulation, but it is not definitive and does not exclude suicidal hanging.
On the 16th of August, it was officially ruled that Epstein's death was suicide by hanging, and on the 19th of August, US District Judge Richard Berman declared he would not be pursuing further criminal charges against Epstein, ending the official criminal investigation into Epstein and his activities.
Because Jeffrey Epstein, the defendant, died while this case was pending, and therefore before a final judgment was issued, the indictment must be dismissed.
Epstein's legal team challenged the findings from the medical examiner's office, saying that they were not satisfied with the conclusions of the examiner.
The defence team fully intends to conduct its own independent and complete investigation into the circumstances and cause of Mr. Epstein's death, including, if necessary, legal action to view the pivotal videos, if they exist as they should, of the area proximate to Mr. Epstein's cell during the time period leading to his death.
It is a remarkable series of events that caused one of the most high profile prisoners in the world to end up alone in his cell, unwatched by security cameras and unmonitored by guards who were overworked under-trained and negligent at the time of his death.
The first irregularity is the claim that Epstein had attempted to commit suicide on the 23rd of July 2019, approximately two weeks before he was found dead.
On this occasion, he was found semi-conscious in his cell with injuries to his neck.
He claimed to his lawyers that he had been assaulted by his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglioni, a corrupt cop who was in jail for murdering four men as part of a cocaine conspiracy.
Strangely, corporate media began to speculate that Epstein had attempted suicide despite his own claim to the contrary.
Bruce Barkett, Tartaglione's lawyer, was the source of the claim that the two got along well, and that this story had been leaked because Tartaglione had complained about the poor conditions within the jail.
Tartaglioni was not found to have done anything wrong, and so it appears to just be presumed that Epstein attempted to commit suicide, which is why he was then placed on Suicide Watch.
At some point after the incident in July, Epstein was given a psychiatric evaluation, determined not to be a risk to himself, and taken off of Suicide Watch, something which stunned several experts.
Bob Hood, a former Federal Bureau of Prisons Chief of Internal Affairs and former warden at the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado, said he also was perplexed by the decision to remove the suicide safeguards.
Under the circumstances, I would have a staff member sitting there or have a camera on him 24-7 while he was in my custody, purely to cover my butt.
I know that sounds tacky, but this is not your average inmate.
At 6.30am on the 10th of August 2019, Epstein was found dead.
The day after Epstein's death, rumours began circulating that the cameras monitoring Epstein's cell were malfunctioning and would not produce any footage which would show the circumstances of his death.
Insiders also apparently claimed that the cameras could not see inside of the cells.
Not that that would have mattered anyway, as prison officials said that the footage from the cameras outside of Epstein's cell was quote, too flawed to be used in the investigation.
At the time of writing, this footage has still not been released.
Despite Epstein not being on Suicide Watch and having no footage from any cameras on him or his cell, prison regulations called for Epstein to be checked up on once every 30 minutes.
However, Epstein was reportedly left alone and not monitored because the prison was understaffed and there were not enough guards on duty to do the job.
The two guards on duty at the time were apparently on overtime, and one of the people assigned to monitor Epstein was only a trainee and not a fully fledged correctional officer.
Both guards were put under investigation for allegedly sleeping on the job and fudging records, and both officers and the warden have been suspended or temporarily reassigned, respectively.
It appears that Epstein was unmonitored for at least three hours.
Even if Tartaglione was left alone and unmonitored in a cell with Epstein, which would be remarkable given how Epstein claims to have been assaulted by Tartaglioni, he can be ruled out as the potential murderer if the information we have is accurate.
The Washington Post reported that on Friday the 9th of August, the day before Epstein was found dead, Tartaglioni was removed from the shared cell and placed in a similar one nearby.
On the morning of Jeffrey Epstein's death, there was shouting and shrieking from his jail cell, a source familiar with the situation told CBS News.
Correctional officers attempted to revive him while saying, breathe, Epstein, breathe.
However, Bruce Barkett said that Tartaglioni, his client, had not heard anything.
As NBC News reported, Barkett said rather mysteriously, Nick knows a heck of a lot about what went on.
He was there during the first attempt, and he was there when he actually killed himself.
He just wasn't in the same cell.
Whether or not he'll be in a position to cooperate remains unclear, but he certainly has information that would be very valuable to the investigation if they want access to it.
On the 21st of August, Tartaglione alleged that he had been threatened by the guards because he has damaging information concerning them.
It was inevitable that a series of conspiracy theories would erupt across the internet at the moment that Jeffrey Epstein's death was announced, because of who he was, no matter the official explanation.
In the scramble for details in an emerging story, conflicting reports allow readings of evidence that could suggest foul play.
The atrocious and or incompetent conditions within the Metropolitan Correctional Center compound the problem by being so bad that they are difficult to believe.
Even before Epstein died, he was at the center of a remarkable number of conspiracy theories, most of which centered around the strange things he believed and the debauched things he did.
Epstein's connections and lifestyle provide a natural framework for a memorable cinematic narrative of elite corporate corruption.
It should come as no surprise that almost three weeks after Epstein's death, only 33% of Americans polled believe the medical examiner's conclusion of suicide was actually correct.
He was right about all this Jeffrey Epstein shit.
That is a fucking fact.
Alex Jones called this years ago.
Years ago.
He was saying that they take a lot of famous people to this island and they have all these young girls that this guy hooks them up with.
He was talking about this years ago.
Now it is mainstream news.
The official story that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in jail because of poor conditions and his poor mental state is short, leaves no loose ends, and leans heavily on public trust in the integrity of institutions and the authority of their experts.
It is also very much in doubt.
Prison conditions in the federally run Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center have long been known to be terrible.
When the MCC was opened in 1975, the New York Times reported that it was a humane environment, a clean, high-quality prison that was to house 480 inmates with an eye towards rehabilitation.
In 2019, the MCC housed nearly 800 inmates and was described by one academic as a gulag.
If I described these conditions to you, filthy, freezing, no natural light, isolation so extreme that you're punished for speaking through the walls, absurd rules like prisoners not getting to see the newspapers unless they're 30 days old, secrecy so deep that people are force-fed, and lawyers can be punished for describing the conditions their clients are experiencing, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was Iran or Russia, but in fact this gulag exists right here in Lower Manhattan.
There is a persistent staff shortage and correctional officers are offered a $10,000 bonus if they agreed to be transferred to the MCC.
Guards occasionally work up to 16 hours a day and a representative for the staff described the situation as completely inadequate as the overworked guards are exhausted and not alert.
A union official reported that the prison is operating with only 70% of the required staff with teachers and nurses being asked to make up the shortfall.
The MCC has housed a long list of famous criminals such as drug lord El Chapo who described the conditions as psychological and mental torture 24 hours a day.
Conditions in the cells were reported to be positively medieval, a fact that was well known to anyone who'd been unfortunate enough to work there.
Problems with the plumbing regularly caused sanitation overflow and inmates frequently reported that rats and cockroaches were infesting their living space and crawling over them at night.
The problems of the MCC were known to be so bad that in 2018 a British court refused to extradite an accused hacker because it was expected that he would end up there.
Civil rights attorney Andrew Lawfer has filed numerous lawsuits over the conditions of the MCC and other jails, including extreme brutality from the guards.
In one 2017 case an inmate was beaten to death by the guards who attempted to cover up the murder by claiming the man had taken an overdose.
You have someone who's been beaten to death in MCC and there are cameras everywhere.
There's not an inch of that facility that is not surveilled.
No one cares.
The status of Epstein's mental condition during his incarceration is subject to conflicting reports.
A single unknown source told the Daily Beast that Epstein lived like a pig in a sty and ate his meals off the floor while exhibiting other bizarre behaviours.
But according to another anonymous source that spoke to the New York Post, they claimed that Epstein was in great spirits the day before he was found dead, and he also told his lawyers that he expected to see them again on that coming Sunday.
Epstein had long visits from his lawyers each day, misusing a rule about visiting lawyers to spend time outside of his cell in a separate prisoner attorney room.
Sometimes he would spend up to 12 hours per day with his lawyers.
The source reported that Epstein was so confident that he could succeed legally that he seemed optimistic to the point of delusion.
Epstein's 2008 sweetheart deal conviction was to be the key to his defense strategy.
He thought he was going to win the double jeopardy motion.
What he really wanted was to get bail so he could cooperate.
He thought he was going to get the same deal he got in Florida.
Doubtless, Epstein imagined that he could use his expensive lawyers, personal connections and vast fortune to create a soft landing for himself as he did in 2008.
Given that these are conflicting single-source and anonymous accounts, I do not know how much stock we can put in either one.
But beyond one single anonymous account, we have no evidence that Epstein's mental condition was unusual.
It is also difficult to see why Jeffrey Epstein would want to commit suicide.
Epstein had already been convicted for the same crime and he had essentially gotten away with it.
There seems to be no reason why Epstein would be in poor spirits about this predicament, beyond the conditions in his cell or the treatment by the guards, and Tartaglioni had been moved to another cell the day before.
Epstein's own legal team do not believe he committed suicide.
During a US district court hearing on the 28th of August 2019, two of the legal team told the judge that they had significant doubts regarding the conclusion of suicide.
As they put it, after speaking to Epstein only a few hours before he was found dead, we did not see a despairing, despondent, suicidal person.
One of the earliest conspiracy theories that emerged about Jeffrey Epstein's death was that Epstein was not murdered in his cell, but instead replaced by a homeless man who looked similar.
Presumably the real Epstein was trafficked out somehow and escaped back to Little St. James, his Caribbean island paradise.
A leaked photo of what appears to be paramedics wheeling Epstein's unconscious body out of the prison provided a picture that could be examined.
It seemed that apparent discrepancies between this image and other pictures of Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive suggested that what we saw was a body double.
This theory was further supported by drone footage of Epstein's island Little St. James, which purports to show Jeffrey Epstein on his island.
A YouTube channel called Rusty Shackleford has been regularly publishing drone footage of Little St. James throughout the duration of the controversy.
In a video published on the 31st of August 2019, we can see what appears to be an older looking man with grey white hair sitting in a work cart while talking to another worker.
However, the evidence to support this view is questionable.
The leaked image of Epstein on the stretcher was compared to a 15-year-old picture which had been reversed.
That is, it was the wrong ear.
When compared to a picture from 2010 of what we can be sure is the correct ear, this discrepancy seems to disappear.
The ear looks identical.
The drone footage from Little St. James is more difficult to address because of the range at which it was shot, but when zoomed in enough, it seems that it could be Jeffrey Epstein.
However, two weeks prior to this, Inside Edition had sent a reporter to Little St. James in a chartered boat, and after landing on the island were confronted by a tall, thin man with white hair, who appeared to act as a custodian for the island.
His image and occupation seemed to fit the image from the drone footage more accurately than it does Jeffrey Epstein.
An alternative conspiracy theory is that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his cell by agents of certain rich and powerful politicians in order to prevent him from revealing the full extent of his underage sex trafficking operation.
It would of course be utterly ruinous to find out that certain billionaires or ex-presidents had abused Epstein's girls in their time flying on his planes or spent at his islands.
This theory is made plausible in two parts.
Firstly, by Epstein's vast web of connections.
Although always speculated due to the company he kept and the social circles in which he moved, the full extent of his connections were revealed when his little black book was leaked to the internet.
Epstein's list of contacts was voluminous and stratospheric.
In his book were the numbers of hundreds of the most famous and powerful people in the world.
Presidents, prime ministers, pop icons, fashion designers, movie stars and more.
Upon the release of this book, many of the people named in it rapidly moved to distance themselves from Epstein, claiming that they had never even met him, let alone be friends, and that they had no idea how their number came to be there.
It is likely that many of them had attended parties at one of his many properties, and that their connection to him opens the door as to whether they had been customers of his underage sex trafficking operation.
This conspiracy theory posits that the majority of the people listed in Epstein's book were complicit in his crimes, claiming also that it was the source of his mysterious wealth and influence.
Epstein is theorized to have used his sex trafficking operation to extract money and leverage from the elite in order to satiate their lust for sex with underage girls.
Revelations that Epstein's properties were wired with hidden cameras further fueled this speculation, as it would seem likely that if any of this were true, there would be powerful blackmail material in the form of video evidence of the most powerful people in the world having sex with children.
This evidence would surely be sufficient to ensure that the network of the global social elite would pull whatever strings were necessary to prevent Epstein running afoul of the law, lest they all be implicated and sent down.
Since Epstein had been caught and was due to face a lengthy trial in which enough information had surfaced to raise questions about hundreds of elite people, Epstein had to go.
Secondly, the incompetence of the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center was so gross that it seems to lead one to believe that perhaps it was not accidental.
From having incompetent, ill-trained guards on duty, a lack of video footage of Epstein in his cell, to the removal of his cellmate, the only other witness, it is quite possible with a certain reading of the facts to construct a persuasive narrative that the situation was engineered by shadowy forces to pay off the relevant authorities and send an agent into his cell to perform the deed.
The discovery by autopsy of broken bones in Epstein's neck that are more characteristic of death by strangulation added fuel to this file.
And testimony by an ex-MCC convict that the sheets alone would not have sufficient strength to allow a six-foot-tall, 200 pound mang to hang himself complete the narrative that he was murdered in jail.
One of Epstein's former bodyguards, a Russian ex-MMA fighter called Ignor Zinoviev, believed that someone did that to him.
Zinoviev was interviewed by New York magazine after Epstein's death and the interviewer cites a previous interview in which Zinoviev was a lot more forthcoming with his statements, as the following extract shows.
Interviewer.
You told me he would get phone calls the night before and 8 o'clock the police are going to come.
He would get a heads up from the local police.
Zinoviev.
Silence.
Interviewer.
You told me that, Igor.
Want me to read the quote?
Zinoviev.
Well, you can read whatever you want right now.
Don't just, you can put yourself in big trouble.
Interviewer.
You said, he always do something wrong.
There were some nights in question.
There was at home arrest and police before they come to the house.
They call him and tell him they're coming at 8 o'clock in the morning.
It's all corruption, you know.
It's all bullshit.
Zinoviev.
Listen, don't put yourself in trouble.
Seriously.
That Epstein was murdered is the most popular theory surrounding Epstein's death, with 34% of the public believing this to be the case and only 33% believing he committed suicide.
This theory hangs on a very unusual set of circumstances, of which one possible explanation is that what we see are the perfect conditions for the elite to protect themselves from public scrutiny by ensuring the death of a key actor in their conspiracy.
Unfortunately, at this time, it is impossible to give a definitive answer as to who killed Jeffrey Epstein.
Many pundits predicted Epstein's death after he was arrested, and there are many irregularities in the circumstances that render an accurate judgment impossible.
There is not yet enough to firmly point the finger at foul play.
The evidence we have for this theory is peripheral, circumstantial, and inferential.
Yes, Epstein was a convicted underage sex offender.
Yes, he did fly with Bill Clinton over 20 times on a plane colloquially known as the Lolita Express.
Yes, if the court case had gone ahead, there would doubtless be a mountain of rancid excrement uncovered on some of the most high-profile people in the world.
Yes, he did think he was going to get out of this with another sweetheart deal.
Yes, the guards at the MCC did appear to be corrupt.
Yes, it is strange that there is absolutely zero camera footage of Epstein's cell.
Yes, it is strange that there were conflicting reports of screams coming from his cell.
Yes, it is strange that so many of the small bones in his neck were broken.
And yes, his own legal team refused to accept the result.
Yes, there is a whiff of conspiracy around this whole thing.
However, we cannot rule out suicide and we don't actually have a suspect.
There are many people around Epstein who are served by his death, but we don't have any evidence that we can use to identify with any accuracy who might have done it.
The prison conditions might simply have been so bad that Epstein was driven to it.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that one of the guards or one of the other inmates has done it and it was then covered up by the prison.
We simply do not have proof.
Of course, in the realm of public opinion, it is likely that suicide will remain a minority opinion among explanations because it is very hard to deny that it all looked very, very suspicious.
I will likely do a part three of this series on Epstein because I've gathered so much information, it really had to be split up.
Next, I'll look at the web of social connections around him, as revealed in the unsealed files of his 2008 deposition and his little black book.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me on Subscribestar, PayPal, and Bitcoin, and as has been so much demanded, I have added a bunch of stuff to the store, including the Sargon Sen Pai pillow that has recently become famous.
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