If you’re not asking questions about Epstein’s death, then you’re the conspiratorial one – Washington Examiner

There are a great many questions about the death of fraud financier and serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. So far, there have been only a handful of answers. That in itself gives rise to even more questions.

I say “death” rather than “suicide” because, contrary to the insistence of many, Occam’s razor does not dictate that the most well-connected sex trafficker in the Western world most likely died in federal prison by suicide by self-asphyxiation. That’s surely possible, but hardly certain, and it’s bizarre that so many commentators are chastising everyone who raises the slightest bit of skepticism.

Epstein allegedly attempted suicide a couple of weeks prior to his death. Per his attorney’s request, the Metropolitan Correctional Center reportedly took him off suicide watch six days after the attempt, placing him on “special observation status.” That status would have required guards check in on him every half hour and that Epstein have a cellmate. At the time of his death, Epstein apparently had no cellmate, and neither of the two guards working in his protective unit checked in on him as procedure demanded.

This is currently being attributed to the fact that they were on extreme overtime and got sloppy. Of course — why bother to follow procedure with America’s best-known celebrity criminal? What could possibly go wrong?

Rather than declare case closed, it’s a suicide, as so many want us to do, federal agencies should take an unflinching look at this story. Epstein potentially had the goods to take out a big chunk of the people you see on your television every day. How the hell was he allowed to die in a federal jail, either by his own intentional suicide or other means?

Epstein had told fellow inmates and guards that someone tried to kill him. Maybe he was lying. Surely suicide is possibly the explanation, but it’s not necessarily the least complicated explanation for the facts we have.

Of course, we also shouldn’t go asserting uncorroborated or unfathomable theories. Don’t start claiming that Hillary Clinton had him done in, or that Attorney General William Barr, who has demanded that the FBI provide the Department of Justice with updates on the investigation every three hours, was secretly in the tank for Epstein because his father, Donald Barr, may have hired Epstein to teach math at the Dalton School in 1974. (The elder Barr resigned from the elite prep school in February of that year, and Epstein began teaching in the fall.)

Sadly “the authorities” aren’t trustworthy these days. We live in an era where experience tells us to trust neither the Catholic hierarchy to protect “these little ones,” nor the University of Southern California to protect either its students from predators ( two different predators) or the integrity of it admissions process. As for killings under unusual circumstances, a low-level judge just vociferously endorsed the flagrant cover-up of a police shooting in Chicago — a rare case indeed because by chance everything was caught on tape.

So in the light of those very real conspiracies to cover up injustices, why would we trust the federal penal system after a death so mysterious?

The answer is that we shouldn’t. Epstein treated women and girls like chattel and abused them like slaves. We must begin by ripping apart and annotating every black book until all those complicit in his monstrous trafficking operation — either by action or by passivity — receive just retribution. In the meantime, yes, the story behind his death stinks, and every effort must be made to find a clearer explanation of what happened, even if that means the incurious and self-interested will start calling people “conspiracy theorists” just for using common sense.