← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
NEW Epstein Death Timeline (Special Report)
00:41:42
MS NOW’s Ari Melber delivers an in-depth special report, presenting a new timeline of Jeffrey Epstein’s death.
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A
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C
Thank you. Welcome to the beat. There is new heat tonight on the Trump DOJ for its handling of Jeffrey Epstein's death. You can see here a new death timeline that we have been working on. This is moments away. It's one of our special reports. It draws on the new files. You can see the heat on Trump's attorney General Bill Barr, on indictments on the Watchdog Report. I'm gonna walk through all of this tonight and how it's rocking the Trump range. White House that is moments away. While we begin with President Trump's war. It is opposed across the U.S. it's driving energy blowback and economic anxiety. Gas prices soaring as today Trump visits Ohio and Kentucky. Unfortunately, prices are going to be up for a while.
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D
Until this ends, freedom is not free.
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C
Americans are going to have to make some sacrifices.
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E
I think that people just sort of need to take a breath and wait a minute for some of this to shake out.
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D
I mean, this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done. I knew oil prices would go up. If I did this.
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C
Price went up. Trump aides have started turning dark, pessimistic, musing about the risk of a long war. The Times reports while facts show Trump was wrong to publicly deny the US killed over 100 schoolgirls in that Iran strike. It was based on faulty intel. But the preliminary inquiry shows Trump's Pentagon is responsible for that strike. He falsely denied it this week. Many critics saying he clearly lied. Now, Americans have long turned against Mideast interventions. It's an issue Trump ran Against. And the hangover from Republicans lying the nation into the Iraq war has shaped a generation of geopolitics. Republican Rand Paul, who has bucked his own party's war agenda over the years, now warning he views Trump's bad Iran policy as a path to to even worse losses in November, the 2026 elections. Already we are behind the eight ball as far as the electoral process.
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D
I think if you add in high
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C
gas prices, high oil prices and if we are still bombing Iran with kinetic action, people don't want to call it war. But if there's still kinetic action that causes oil to be over $100, I think you're going to see a disastrous election. Republican bracing for disaster. I'm joined now by Howard Dean, former governor and DNC chair who also ran for president on an anti war platform. Governor, your thoughts on this piece of it and what you think Rand Paul is doing there?
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D
You know, it's amazing. Rand Paul and I probably don't agree on a lot of things but I do respect his integrity which is something that's in very short supply on the Republican side of the aisle. You know, I don't know what possesses people leadership to lie about what's going on. Just the Republicans. It was Nixon, George W. Bush and and now Trump. Lyndon Johnson lied. Tonkin probably was was fabricated incident. I don't understand why you put American troops at risk of their lives for causes that you're not willing to be truthful with the American people about it. Let let's, you know, let's be clear. The Iranian rulership is are a bunch of thugs and Trump probably env they control their own civilians. But to get us involved with this with no thought. I don't think it even occurred to Trump that the Iranians were going to hit other Middle Eastern countries and dry up the oil supply for the world. I mean there's no thinking going on in that administration whatsoever. At least Bush had people around him who knew what he knew what they were talking about.
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C
Yeah, or another, another way to say it is it's even worse than that depending on how you look at it. All of the serious policy planning, intelligence and thinking that goes on which he has available to him the best intelligence services in the world, 17 of them have plotted and war gamed all of this. And to your point, that thinking was quite clearly ignored or rejected. While Donald Trump does improv.
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D
Well, they did worse than that. They fired all the people who were the screeners in the past. For example, in the second Iraq war with the first one I thought, by the way, was justified because I thought we had to stand up for the, our treaty with Kuwait when Saddam invaded Kuwait. But the second one, MI6, knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that there were no atomic, there's no atomic program going on in Iraq. And if MI6 knew it, the British intelligence agency, then the FBI, then the CIA knew it. And if the CIA knew it, somebody was either withholding that information from Cheney and Bush or they were lying straight. I don't think George W. Bush is a liar for whatever you think about his politics. So somebody else was doing the lying for them and for the administration. Now who to a person says this was a massive failure of intelligence? That is crap. They knew. Somebody knew damn well in our administration what was going to go on. And now it's happening again. I think Trump has fired all the possibly competent people so the fewer left don't dare say anything because they'll lose their jobs. So his problem is even worse cuz he doesn't even have anybody who's, who's willing to tell him the truth.
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C
All fair. You mentioned how you don't always agree with Rand Paul. Joe Rogan agrees with some of your warnings and I mention your history because it matters. Sometimes, you know, in our American politics, it feels like there's no memory or accountability for anything. But it was you and then Barack Obama who changed foreign policy in the Democratic Party and then in the country. And now Americans heard Donald Trump. Do you know he was doing a 2003 Howard Dean impression? He just didn't govern like 2003 Howard Dean because Trump ran against all the forever wars. If you think about it, if you pardon my comparison, you guys have different mannerisms. Here's Joe Rogan on all the forever wars. You started World War III by doing
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D
something that other than people that wanted
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this forever, who else thinks that's a good idea? It doesn't seem like it's well thought out. Well, it seems charitable, but it just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars. And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.
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D
Howard, I don't understand why we did it either. As I said before, the Iranian government are thugs and they oppress their own people. But for us to do this without thinking about what the consequences are, without. How could you do this without understanding that the oil prices were going to go up to $120 a barrel. And the result of this, the Democrats were going to win anyway in 2026. But no amount of cheating at this point by Trump is going to be able to change that. People are really upset. We just flipped a house last night in the New Hampshire legislature. Again, look at the results in Marjorie Taylor Greene's number. The Democrat did far better than in, in that election that it's a jungle primary than they ever had when she was there. People are sick of this. And even people who voted for Trump, a lot of them are just, they, they weren't promised this, they weren't promised higher gas prices and higher food prices and they are really upset. And this administration is doing absolutely nothing to make it better.
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So you draw a line in the midterms. Rand Paul drew a line in the midterms. Trump aides are doing this thing where they leak and put outsourcing because I guess they can't reach him in private about the midterms. We have the estimate. No one can see the future. But if the midterms were today, which is one of the more reliable ways to gauge how the country feels? People say generic congressional ballot, it's a 10 point in the Democrats favor to remind everyone it was a point and a half nationally in 24 Trump taheres a point and a half. What do you see here in a ten point Democratic edge?
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D
Well, look, the Democrats are well known for being able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Washington Democrats, Democrats still have to change their approach. I'm very glad that they insisted that they're not going to fund ICE when ICE is behaving like the Gestapo. But Democrats have got to wise up. The world is not inside the beltway of Washington. It's out in the, on the hustings. It's, it's, I, I had a meeting with the governor of Kentucky over the weekend. He's got a great way of looking at this stuff. He doesn't get bogged down in all the anti gay, anti abortion, anti trans stuff. He says, well look, why don't you. He vetoes all that stuff because he's got a very conservative legislator. He vetoes it all and says why are we talking about these things when our public education system is falling apart and people can't get jobs? And that's why he's been, you know, this is a Democrat who's won four times, three times in, in one of the most Republican areas of the, of the country. We need that, we need outside the beltway thinking. We need to be honest and caring about the American people who are suffering economically and get away from all the, I mean, one of the most effective ads that Trump ran was she cares about the he, they, them, and we care about you. It was crap, of course, but it was effective. And we just need people who are not in Washington who understand what it takes to run a state and understands that jobs and education are the things and health care are the things that people really care about. And do not let the Republicans get away with this bs.
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Hmm. Understood. Governor Howardine, thank you so much.
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Thank you.
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C
I want to tell everyone we have something important here. Coming up, the Epstein files have been rocking Trump's White House. Tonight we have for you one of our investigative timelines, a new expose on the DOJ's handling of Epstein's death. I'm going to show you damning new material and videos you will not see anywhere else on air tonight. I'm going to bring you that report in 90 seconds. Now we turn to an original beat special report drawing on new evidence from the Epstein files about Jeffrey Epstein's death in custody. Our new death timeline. He was awaiting trial and his death was always a serious issue. The DOJ is supposed to prevent inmate deaths or suicide. The Trump DOJ admitted key video recordings failed, that its jail staff broke the rules. Two officers were indicted for lying about that night. Later, the Biden DOJ issued a watchdog report on even more problems. Amidst all that, the government has maintained the same conclusion that Epstein hung himself. The autopsy ruling the death a, quote, suicide. Now, that finding was always a problem for the Trump doj, with inquiries on how this high profile defendant went from arrest to to death in a single month. It's an error for the Bureau of Prisons to provide conditions that allow preventable suicide. Federal law requires prison suicide prevention. Treatment, screenings, watches, transfers and jail suicides are rare. Most inmates have cellmates, which makes them harder to do. In a federal prison, there are just about 20 plus suicides a year. Homicides are even rarer. Per DOJ estimates, any suicide is a serious matter. And remember, this was not any suicide. The Trump DOJ faced swift questions about issues ranging from missing evidence to the cell conditions. Epstein was not as big a topic at that time as right now, but the week he died, we can show you. The initial reports ranged from echoing the government autopsy to raising questions about his death conditions on the beat. We reported then how his in custody death came amid a case where there was a lot wrong with the Trump administration's approach. Breaking news. Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide overnight in a Manhattan jail cell.
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Multiple investigations now underway.
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This is a are you kidding me? Moment for Bill Barr's Justice Department. There's a lot that's been wrong with this case from the very first inception to this now embarrassing in custody death. There's some significant questions on how somebody who it was such a high profile defendant could be found dead and how this could have happened. All deaths in custody are investigated. And here the DOJ went further. They did a more exhaustive watchdog probe published by the later Biden administration. Years later, Congress used its powers to request even more information in this new Epstein transparency law which demands evidence on the death incident reports, witness interviews, medical examiner files, autopsy reports and records on the circumstances and cause of death. Now, citing cause is big. It shows Congress's current view that the government's stated cause of suicide is under review. The Trump DOJ did declare it a suicide. They also bungled the probe and the crime scene. Later, the Biden administration reached the same conclusion. So right now is Congress questioning if Epstein did take his life? Well, leader for this law, Democrat Robert Garcia says yes. And the Trump doj, he says is still hiding the death documents, documentation around Epstein's detention and death. Do you have all of the known requested such documents? I mean, absolutely not. I mean the, the DOJ right now,
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first they've withheld 50% of the documents at a minimum. I'm not sure if there's person in this country that isn't suspicious at least somewhat of the circumstances around Jeffrey Epstein's death.
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Amid those suspicions and the new law, we are now building on our Epstein reporting. We previously did a legal case timeline. Tonight we have this new timeline of Epstein's death, the original story, the pending questions and now what we're learning from some of the new files. We can report that the Trump DOJ bungled the initial probe, oversaw evidence failures and officers who broke the rules, some later indicted. They failed to even take fingerprints in Epstein's cell after finding him dead. And that the Garland DOJ dithered in its probe, minimized key problems. And the most important news we can report tonight, the DOJ cut an FBI account of a possible sighting of an inmate near Epstein's cell the night of his death. Now let's follow the timeline through the sometimes bombshell evidence. We begin in July 2019. Epstein arrested on sex trafficking charges, denied bail, jailed. Soon, he was found in his cell with an injury. July 23 is the key date in this death timeline. That's the first big date because he was found with an orange cloth around his neck, Epstein first telling staff his cellmate tried to kill him, per government records, later saying he didn't know what happened. Now that could be a key claim from someone who would soon be found dead with similar orange prison garb around his neck. Now Epstein's cellmate denied that, telling staff that Epstein tried to hang himself. Another inmate agreed with part of that, and a preliminary jail probe reached no conclusion either way, citing insufficient evidence. Now that incident let the jail led them to put him on suicide watch, but oddly, that ended after just six days. Now think about that. If the Trump DOJ concluded Epstein injured himself in self harm, not an attack, why take him off suicide watch so quickly? And if they thought the attack complaint was possibly credible, then they were on notice of a possible threat to Epstein. Now later he gave a conflicting account of the same incident, saying he didn't know what went down and then he wouldn't discuss injuries. There are also reports Epstein was advised to pay protection money to be safe from jail attacks. Now the jail did take a precaution, assigning a new cellmate after the jail psych ward said Epstein should get an appropriate one. But that didn't last. The jail transferred Epstein's new cellmate out and then failed to assign a new one. That proved crucial. A day later, Epstein's body was found, having been left alone in his cell. Despite the recent suicide watch, the mandate that he not be alone, Epstein had been regular meeting with his lawyers on site. We also know that two days before the death on August 8, he updated his will. Now, this was only discovered later. Updating a will can indicate that a person's pondering death. Investigators don't view a will change alone as strong suicide proof, though. Instead, psychological autopsies use several factors, not one behavior. And a will change can reflect one's fear of death, be that from disease or a murderer. So in our timeline, the will change with other factors is circumstantial evidence, perhaps that Epstein was suicidal, which some have noted. Now, inmate lawyer meetings are private, so the jail didn't know about the will until after his death. The change, the government's chief psychologist says it would have been a red flag. So Epstein was then found dead on August 10th after these developments. Now let's zoom in on the night before. Jail rules only allow inmates personal phone calls on a recorded line. But Epstein made a secret unsupervised call around 7pm telling staff he was calling his mother a lie, since she'd been dead for 15 years. And yet staff allowed Epstein to break the rules with this call, unrecorded and unmonitored before going back to his cell. If the staff followed the rules, we would have audio of Epstein's final conversation hours before he was found dead. Evidence of his state of mind, maybe more so. Why would staff let this inmate indicted for grave crimes break rules? The DOJ report quotes an inmate who saw Epstein's power and money intimidating officers, that Epstein would, quote, tell them he was writing down their name for his lawyer, and they were on eggshells around him. Now, the DOJ says it found that Epstein called a woman that he was dating. Epstein told the guards he told her the guards were, quote, trying to keep me safe, she recounted to the DOJ through her lawyer. If that's true, it paints Epstein as more concerned that night about his safety rather than suicidal in his remarks. Could be that the lawyer's summary is also misleading or incomplete. Now, on our timeline, the guards then return Epstein to his newly empty cell after the call. But in another protocol violation, they failed to do required overnight checks. The inmate counts every 30 minutes, which was part of the protection and the whole point of having him in this special unit. Instead, he's alone and unmonitored for eight hours until officers found this scene. The ripped prison uniforms fashioned for a hanging. Now, when a jail investigates a suspicious inmate death, they look at, one, if the inmate took his life, or two, the possibility that somebody killed him. If an inmate's alone until they're found hanging, that means suicide. No one else was there to do it. Jail records video, though. In the area facing Epstein's shell, in the cell area, they had two jail cameras. Both failed to record, so there was only one working camera near the cell that drew headlines at the time. Government defenders, though, cited the remaining camera footage to conclude that they would say no one got near the cell anyway. That night, a top Trump FBI official who rose by questioning the Epstein story, even echoed that view on Trump's behalf last year.
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You're going to see there's no one there but him.
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There is nothing.
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If you have it, I am happy to see it. There's video clear as day. He's the only person in there and the only person coming out.
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You can see it clear as day. A video showing that could resolve any questions. But the Trump official was wrong. This is the start of a timeline. The conclusion is even more striking, and we'll walk you through that. And the bombshell FBI account I mentioned about a possible inmate. Next,
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More than six years later, key details of Jeffrey Epstein's death remain unresolved.
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I'd like to see an investigation to understand how this was permitted to happen when he was incarcerated.
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Christmas ornaments, drywall and Jerry Epstein.
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Name three things that don't hang themselves. If you realize that you've got a high profile person that may or may not have committed suicide, but you need to prove that to people. This is not adequate as far as I'm concerned. We're back with our Epstein death special report. We've been tracking all of the errors in the Trump DOJ's original handling of the case and then the following administration probed those failures but ultimately issued the same finding of suicide in a watchdog report from the garland DOJ in 2023. That hundred page report reviewed the available video camera's footage to conclude the last time anyone came near Epstein's cell was a corrections officer at 10:41pm that's the government conclusion from a detailed probe and report across two administrations. That's where the US Government would have its stay. But this new law famously forced out the secret internal documents from the same probe showing other views within the FBI about the last person near Epstein's cell. Hidden from the public until now. Doj said the officer was the last time anyone entered the area. But the Epstein files have revealed a secret FBI log of the same video which spotted a flash of orange going up the stairs. Inmates wear orange, not officers. The FBI stating a quote, flash of orange looks to be going up the stairs. Could possibly be an inmate escorted up to Epstein's tear. Now, the FBI's own video review detected that prison orange uniform of a possible inmate. That's big. This review had the evidence orange that could be an inmate. But we are now learning it was cut, hidden or accidentally left out of the DOJ report. The new files reveal this never before seen set of details about Epstein's area on the night of his death. And we could show you the locked tier around Epstein's cell. 10:39pm that night, a blurry orange figure appears. The original FBI log calls it that flash of orange could possibly be an inmate. And note that careful description because then the DOJ review of the same footage changes it to write quote, inmates are currently on lockdown. It's possible someone is carrying inmate linen up the stairs. Now that's a huge difference. It replaces observation orange with conjecture. Inmates are on lockdown so they shouldn't be around. But the rule that inmates are supposed to be on lockdown doesn't resolve whether one wasn't. Just like Epstein was supposed to get those 30 minute checks but didn't and I told you about. Now, the DOJ's change prevents questions about that orange flash. And if the jail made another mistake and the public report by the DOJ hides this dispute over the orange flash, it states that a officer appears to walk up the stairway. CBS's Daniel Rootnick first documented this in a report who entered Epstein's jail tier the night of his death. Newly released video logs appear to contradict official accounts and independent experts telling CBS the video is more consistent with someone wearing an orange prison uniform than a corrections officer. The fact is the DOJ's own watchdog report minimized the FBI evidence. That is just a fact. Now people can debate why. Was that a good faith mistake or a malicious cover up. Even video suggesting an inmate on the loose does not resolve questions around Epstein's death. But it would be another rule violation and it would add to the evidence suggesting you need a deeper investigation of potential foul play. That was the only camera angle working shown here on this map. The DOJ report notes recording failures do predate this Epstein probe. There was a history there. And the only working camera that covers a common area outside the entrance to Epstein's general area is here. There isn't video from that better camera that pointed down Epstein's hallway. Now, back in our timeline, moments after Epstein was found dead, the new files for the first time allow us to see the area footage at the moment of that discovery. A figure moving from the desk in the upper left corner towards Epstein's tear and then returning quickly. We see increasing activity. The video adds to the picture of how jail staff responded. Doesn't look like it was an expected event. Some giant conspiracy, at least for the officers on the scene. You can see it gets chaotic. They're moving around outside Epstein's tier. But the FBI then didn't arrive for seven hours. And that's a problem because by then, guards had removed Epstein's body. The cell was in disarray, the crime scene tainted under Trump DOJ authority. And the feds didn't fingerprint or DNA test materials in the cell, which is basic forensics to check if others were in the cell or touched items. The jail had control of the scene but mismanaged the evidence. How bad was it? Well, officers found Epstein with a noose around his neck, but by the time they were done tainting the crime scene, the feds were never even able to establish which noose killed Epstein. There were several nooses fashioned from the clothing. Investigators said they did conclude one handmade noose you see here was not the one used. That's odd. The original account says a guard literally ripped the cloth away when they found Epstein hanging. Then cpr. So the new files reveal the underlying evidence from this probe, and the government expected that stuff to stay secret. They never expected that we'd be on the news telling you about it. Like, one guard recounting that he didn't recall taking the noose off. I really don't. We can also tell you that after the death, two officers were put on leave. Within a week, the medical examiner did state the cause of death was suicide by hanging, mentioning no evidence of defensive wounds that might be part of an attack. The examiner also reviewed footage and thought it was just too blurry to draw conclusions. The new files show they also delayed that ruling on suicide for more review because of Epstein's status. A forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother, Dr. Baden, also looked over the autopsy and had a different conclusion, determining injuries on Epstein's neck were closer to, quote, strangulation than suicide. Now, Baden once served as chief medical examiner in New York. Months later, as we go to the timeline, the DOJ indicted the guards on duty that night for lying about the inmate checks, that never happened. That's a big deal. It added pressure, though, for those guards to cooperate in the probe. And the DOJ later dropped those same charges. We are learning the FBI heard from an inmate who said that officers were heard discussing covering up Epstein's death in some manner. That was reported just this week by the Miami Herald's Julie K. Brown. There was heat on the Trump DOJ over what you can now see was a debacle that looked even worse over time. And in the middle of the probe, Trump Attorney General Barr made an unusual announcement that he said he watched the jail footage. He ruled out anyone entering the cell or foul play. This was days after the guards were first indicted, Barr giving his case. But there were so many failures, he didn't deny them, including, of course, the video recording. He just said the jail had a, quote, perfect storm of screw ups. Years later, the DOJ report documents those failures, but avoided any mention of the crucial conflicting evidence. I just showed you tonight. The flash of orange whether a person or even an inmate was on the loose near Epstein's cell area. Now, it can be reasonable to make an investigative finding that it's unlikely anyone still entered Epstein's locked cell that night. Or you could state that the total evidence just doesn't suggest it. But Trump officials who oversaw these problems in 2019 and the Biden Garland DOJ later issuing the report, okay, they went farther. They basically stretched to try to tamp down the growing public concerns. We've heard about a cover up being sometimes worse than the original incident. Well, ironically, that kind of strained overreach can feed questions about government secrecy, cover ups, or even foul play. The CBS investigation noted the jail camera angle means it's just not possible to rule out if someone could have climbed the stairs and entered that tier. And this new law has forced out all these documents. It's made the DOJ finally show its work and that's driving these fresh questions. Autopsy and two administrations did state Epstein took his own life suicide. But other insiders disagree, several saying they don't think Epstein took his life, including his brother, Jelaine Maxwell and the pathologist I mentioned. And some of those claims can be suspect as his defenders or even conspirators, but that's their view. And a former Trump attorney who Epstein hired in August, the same month as everything I just showed you said, I don't think he committed suicide. He was very engaged in fighting the case. He had basically just hired me to kill himself nine days later. Wouldn't make sense. So let me Take this all together. Tonight, we live in a time of agendas and conjecture and rush narratives. The truth is usually slower and more complex. Epstein's life was a criminal conspiracy and his death became a mystery. First plagued by the Trump DOJ failures, then heightened by government secrecy across two administrations, this new transparency and evidence undercuts some of those past claims. It clearly shows the need for a fuller investigative, independent accounting from Epstein's crimes to his time in custody. And as of this hour, it does not yet provide definitive proof for how his life ended,
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D
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one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com Feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe. Newly released Epstein files are undercutting government accounts of the deceased sex traffickers demise in prison. New tonight, we just walked through this death timeline that raises profound questions. And now we turn to Julie K. Brown, one of the world's foremost experts on this case. She's an investigative journalist. She writes specifically about this case on her newsletter on substack, the Epstein Files. She wrote the book Perversion of Justice, the Jeffrey Epstein Story. She's part of the Miami Herald reporting that really blew open the case and many say led to the indictment that then led to his in custody death. As we just showed, your view of what these new files tell us and any thoughts on the accounting we just did?
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E
Well, I think first of all, you have to go back to what happened to Epstein on July 23rd. And in that specific case, the first thing that he told authorities was that his cellmate, this was a accused and now convicted quadruple killer who was a former police officer cop who he said had been extorting him for money and had been threatening him and ultimately tried to kill him. And after things settled down, he sort of walked it back. He did not, never said, in fact, he denied that he tried to commit suicide. He just said, I'm not sure what happened, I don't remember. So think about this. There's a, a chance that someone tried to harm him. So would you not think that you're going to investigate something like that and make sure that he's safe? They did not investigate that. In fact, what happened was the cellmate's lawyer as well as Epstein's lawyers demanded to see the video footage back then of that incident. And when the BOP turned over that video footage, they said, whoops, we sent you the footage from the wrong cel. They picked another cell area to give them the footage from. So it was this then waterfall of events that happened that it seems like the BOP was either really incompetent or, as some of the investigators suspected, that there might have been something more to this and that there was in fact, some kind of an effort to harm him back then, which then led to him ultimately being left in his cell on the night that he died. Now, they knew from the very beginning, the files are clear. Everyone knew at that prison that he was supposed to have a cellmate. He was not supposed to be alone. And the records also show that the cellmate that he had was taken out in the morning. And there was a code, which I can't remember what it was, but it was a code that basically said the cellmate took all his belongings, he's not coming back. So they knew from roughly 8 o' clock in the morning that Epstein did not have a cellmate. And as you mentioned in your, your well done timeline, there were other times during the day, like when he came back from visiting his lawyers, when he came back from making that phone call, that they had to know that he didn't have a cellmate.
- [38:24]
C
So, yeah, they, they knew that. And then you get the later accounting where you say, well, we have watchdogs and auditors for this reason. And I want to put back up on the screen what I mentioned. I admit it was a lot of material, but we wanted to tell this cohesively. By the end, the watchdog for the DOJ says they didn't find evidence that anyone, not a murderer or an inmate, but that anyone was present in the area where he was housed in that timeframe. Tonight I've shown viewers they can see with their own eyes and a video that suggests someone at least was there and second, that at the time, not later, when they wanted to put out a public accounting, but at the time, internally, FBI accounts also viewed it as a possible inmate. A flash of orange. Break that down for us.
- [39:16]
E
Well, I said this right from the get go that you couldn't see when they were talking about the missing piece of footage early on, I said it doesn't really even in some ways matter because the footage that they had did not show the angle of his cell. In other words, I mean, I covered prison deaths for a very long time. So did, by the way, Dr. Bodna, who was at the autopsy, his job with the New York State, he covered and reviewed prison deaths. If you know anything about prisons and the way they're laid out, there are all kinds of blind spots. So it, they only had one camera that was working. So think about it. That camera didn't even have a, of that particular tier.
- [39:58]
C
I mean, that's why it was corrupted from the start. And we showed Attorney General Barr was overseeing the video problem. But then when you look at the watchdog report saying, well, nobody was there, what does that tell you? What does that concern you as an investigator? Which again, doesn't mean we know what else may or may not have happened. But they seem to have quite directly minimized what the FBI actually saw.
- [40:24]
E
Yeah, it makes no sense unless you're trying to say, look, we don't want to get in trouble, that we had this many errors and there were this many mistakes. So we're just going to say we didn't find any evidence. Which I guess the other evidence they're saying is they interviewed other inmates who said, I didn't see anything. And you know, as I understand it, that's not even accurate.
- [40:47]
C
And one more thing, I'm going to hold you over. So for the one more thing. So we got to do a quick break here. Julie Brown stays with us. When we return,
- [41:03]
D
Christmas ornaments, drywall, and
- [41:05]
C
Jerry Epstein
- [41:08]
D
name three things that don't hang themselves.
- [41:12]
C
That's what the American people think. More than six years later, key details of Jeffrey Epstein's death remain unresolved. We're back with investigative journalist Julie Brown from the Miami Herald. We were discussing this. We'll put the timeline up again, but you had another point to make, so please go ahead.
- [41:30]
E
Well, I, you know, the, there was a story over the weekend. The New York Post did break it, but I did confirm it because these records are in the file, that the DOJ did get some financial records from one of the two guards that were later indicted for falsifying their records. And this female guard had quite a number of cash deposits into her banking account in the weeks before this happened. And a huge deposit, a $5,000 deposit just a week after the alleged attempted suicide happened and a week before Epstein was found dead. It was a $5,000 cash deposit. You could see this in those records. They were looking into the finances of some of these corrections officers. Now, we don't know that this was something that was nef. Maybe it was explained. It doesn't really show in the file, but we nevertheless, it's suspicious. And it also shows that there was someone anyway within the DOJ that was taking this a little bit further and looking at these finances for these correctional officers.
- [42:41]
C
Right. And from looking at criminal finance surveillance and review, that's very surface level, because you have crypto and offshore and families accounts. If you have someone who's looking at dealing with unsavory elements, Mafia or otherwise, abroad, it's not always just the Venmo and the US Banking system. We showed on the timeline those charges were then dropped. How do you view that? Because given the level of failure and that the DOJ went as far as to say they did falsify records, this is a crime, according to the doj, than to drop it. Your view?
- [43:18]
E
Well, I think that they were at a point where they just didn't want to go any further or felt they couldn't go any further. And that even the case against these two officers, there seemed to be so much corruption in that prison right around this time. There was tons of cell phones, for example, that were found that had been smuggled in. There was drug smuggling going on in that prison. In that prison, there was so much corruption going on, it was almost normalized. And I think probably their attorneys would have argued that this was all part of the corruption that was part of this prison's culture that the DOJ never bothered to do anything about.
- [43:58]
C
And that that line at the time went up to the BOP and Trump Attorney General Bill Barr.
- [44:04]
E
Right.
- [44:05]
C
That if you keep digging, you're going to have a higher chain of accountability for those problems. That's separate from whether there was foul, but it certainly goes to the problems that you've reported on for a long time, which is why I wanted you to join us tonight. And what our timeline suggests, which is deceit, a type of COVID up, a lack of transparency for years. And again, as I note across two administrations, some of the errors that have been caught that we identified tonight stretch into the Garland DOJ as well. Julie Brown, thank you so much. I suspect we'll be calling on you again soon.
- [44:39]
E
Thank you.
- [44:40]
C
Appreciate it. Yeah. We'll be right back. You can see our report on Epstein's death@ms.dot Now, Ari. Go to Ms. Now, Ari. We'll have the whole thing there on YouTube and you can share it that way.
- [45:00]
A
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