Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Send in the conspiracy clowns.

benfell

This is not the kind of thing I normally cover (unsatisfactorily rebutted allegations of Donald Trump’s ‘golden showers’ [1] notwithstanding). But, together, the possibilities that 1) Jeffrey Epstein’s death in prison may not have been suicide and 2) his death, if indeed murder, may have been intended to protect other elites[2] bring it to my outer perimeter.

One problem here is going to be that a negative conclusion, one that affirms Epstein’s death was suicide, may not be trusted and indeed may not be trustworthy. That conclusion would itself be plausible,[3] but raises suspicions about how a high-profile prisoner suspected of previously attempting suicide could have been taken off suicide watch while being kept in isolation. Lots of people think this stinks to high hell.[4]

Ken White, also known by his Twitter handle and blog as “Popehat” attempts to address the conspiracy theorizing:

Another problem is that Epstein is far from a sympathetic figure. He was filthy rich and, in the latest allegations, this supposedly enabled him to “sexually abus[e] dozens of young girls in the early 2000s.” In previous similar charges, he’d received a “lenient plea deal” approved by Trump’s erstwhile Labor secretary, “Alexander Acosta, who was then the U.S. attorney in Miami”—Acosta had to resign from Trump’s cabinet as a furor developed around that deal that enabled Epstein to, allegedly, continue abusing underage girls. Epstein had been connected to both Trump and the Clintons,[5] meaning both sides in our intensely polarized political environment have an interest in what further dirt might or might not yet be dug up and in who might or might not yet be implicated.[6]

Trump shared a tweet and video from conservative comedian Terrence Williams that claimed without evidence that former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Trump’s 2016 presidential election rival – were responsible for Epstein’s death.[7]

And apart from Epstein’s alleged victims, who obviously have a legitimate interest in the pursuit of these investigations, a larger issue may be that the pursuit of Epstein, even beyond the grave, subsumes the problem of the morality of polarization.[8] That is, until one side or the other of that political divide seems to be taking the worst of what emerges from these investigations.

There’s a lot of smoke. We don’t know how much fire there is or how widespread the fire is or how far in which directions it has spread. But I wouldn’t expect the outcome to be symmetric. Which all but guarantees doubts, founded or not, about any outcome of the investigations into Epstein’s alleged crimes or his death.

  1. [1]Jeff Stein, “Trump, Russian Spies and the Infamous ‘Golden Shower Memos,’” Newsweek, January 10, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-russian-spies-infamous-golden-shower-memos-541315; Katie Bo Williams and Jonathan Easley, “Five takeaways from the Fusion GPS testimony,” Hill, January 10, 2018, http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/368210-five-takeaways-from-the-fusion-gps-testimony↩
  2. [2]Matt Zapotosky et al., “Jeffrey Epstein dead after ‘apparent suicide’ in New York,” Washington Post, August 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/jeffrey-epstein-kills-himself-in-jail-according-to-media-reports/2019/08/10/a3d48862-bb73-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html↩
  3. [3]Morgan Krakow, Hannah Knowles, and Marisa Iati, “‘We need answers. Lots of them.’ What’s known and what’s next after Jeffrey Epstein’s death,” Washington Post, August 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/10/we-need-answers-lots-them-whats-known-whats-next-after-jeffrey-epsteins-death/↩
  4. [4]Matt Zapotosky et al., “Jeffrey Epstein dead after ‘apparent suicide’ in New York,” Washington Post, August 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/jeffrey-epstein-kills-himself-in-jail-according-to-media-reports/2019/08/10/a3d48862-bb73-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html↩
  5. [5]Matt Zapotosky et al., “Jeffrey Epstein dead after ‘apparent suicide’ in New York,” Washington Post, August 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/jeffrey-epstein-kills-himself-in-jail-according-to-media-reports/2019/08/10/a3d48862-bb73-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html↩
  6. [6]Morgan Krakow, Hannah Knowles, and Marisa Iati, “‘We need answers. Lots of them.’ What’s known and what’s next after Jeffrey Epstein’s death,” Washington Post, August 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/10/we-need-answers-lots-them-whats-known-whats-next-after-jeffrey-epsteins-death/↩
  7. [7]Jeremy Diamond, “Trump promotes Epstein-Clintons conspiracy theory, the latest in a pattern of baseless claims spread by President,” CNN, August 11, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/11/politics/jeffrey-epstein-trump-conspiracy-theory-clintons/index.html↩
  8. [8]David Benfell, “The morality of polarization,” Not Housebroken, September 21, 2018, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/09/21/the-morality-of-polarization/↩

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