Or did he? From almost the moment Epstein’s body was found Aug. 10 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, imaginations have run wild with conspiracy theories.
No honest, intelligent person could dismiss them out of hand as Infowars delusions: Given the timing of Epstein’s death, given his apparent knowledge of compromising information on some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet, the death smells rotten.
But when investigators do their work, theories must yield to facts. And the facts we’ve learned thus far make an elaborate homicide plot look increasingly unlikely.
Last week, while unveiling federal charges against two guards who were supposed to be in charge of Epstein, Attorney General Bill Barr referenced his own early public doubts. Then he made clear the evidence agents and prosecutors have studied, especially hundreds of hours of jailhouse recordings, reveal not a dark conspiracy but a “perfect storm of screw-ups.”
The guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were in fact sleeping and browsing the internet instead of checking in on the prisoner. Protocols weren’t followed. Epstein, who’d tried to kill himself before, for some reason didn’t have a roommate.
Add to that huge systemic failures, like chronic understaffing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Someone once articulated a rule: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. That person was very smart.
NEW YORK TIMES DAILY
