Transcription
The newly released Epstein files, forced out by Congress, have given us a lot of new information. Much attention has been on Epstein's crimes and co-conspirators. Tonight, we look at Epstein's death because this case timeline and death timeline that I'm going to show you gives us new information about that very controversial and suspicious in-custody death. We've been doing this reporting. I'm Ari Melber, lawyer and journalist, and I want to show you a little bit of what we found.
Some of this is information that we know, but we've gotten a lot more material over time and from the new Epstein files. It was in July that he was initially arrested. And my first entry on this death timeline is that Epstein actually reported that a cellmate tried to kill him, which is suspicious. He was even found with a kind of orange prison garb noose around his neck. And this, of course, is later how he was found dead. Now, there are conflicting accounts on that because the other inmate denied it and Epstein later changed his story. He was put on suicide watch, but then that ended days before his death. He signed a new will and the jail didn't know about that till afterward because the lawyer meetings are private. That raises questions about whether he was pondering his own death. But it doesn't resolve in what they call these autopsy, uh, these, uh, psychological autopsies is the technical term. When you have someone who made a will change or talked to people about their death, that doesn't necessarily resolve circumstantially whether it was potentially suicide or another cause of death or an external threat. It just means they had death on their mind. But he signs this will.
Then you get up to August 9th and you have video now that we never had before around his cell area. They failed to do inmate counts. That was one of the many jail errors. Epstein dies and it was ruled a suicide by the government. But then there were a lot of other problems with that. Those inmate counts I'm mentioning then meant those prison guards were indicted and there are a lot of questions about that misconduct. Those charges, though, were later dropped. Trump Attorney General Bill Barr said, yes, there was a kind of a perfect storm of errors and failures, he said, but that he personally reviewed the video that was available and no one could have gotten into Epstein's cell. Now, if no one got into the cell, if you believe that to be actually true or you had physical proof of that, well, then he killed himself. So, if you had the video, it would be what lawyers call dispositive. That would be the end of it. But there was this video recording failure. And so, the key videos you would need to really show that area weren't made. Bill Barr said, "Okay, but that's it." The charges I mentioned were dropped. That's odd because when the DOJ and the feds want to go at somebody, they usually finish the case. Here, they got some cooperation from those guards who didn't do the work they were supposed to and who were accused of falsifying reports, but then they dropped the charges.
It was years later that the Garland DOJ got a watchdog report out. They stood by the same ruling of suicide and they had a very important part where they said that the only time on the external area video, and this is important, that there was an issue was this little blurred image, but it was an officer, quote, "appeared." And again, if that's true, that the only person seen near the area was this officer and that's accounted for, then you might be satisfied with that outcome. But that's not the whole story. It's only here years later that you get the Epstein Transparency Act. And most of the attention, understandably, is focused on the big names in there, on the cover-up, on Epstein's crimes, on people somehow linked or tied to him, people who lied about visiting the island, people who carried on with him, people who took money from him. In fact, for weeks, that's been the focus. And I think that's understandable. But we've been combing through to make this death timeline what those files show about all this. And the problem is the FBI didn't initially say it was an officer who appeared. They actually described a flash of orange on that one remaining video with, as I mentioned, the other ones failed. And that flash of orange would be an inmate. Inmates wear orange in prison. Officers don't, never do. And that's one of the clear ways. And if you've seen Orange is the New Black or any other those kind of shows, that's one of the clear ways they differentiate. So the FBI itself said in that Epstein tier area of the prison someone, they had a flash of orange. But that's not what they put in the public final report. They basically changed or diluted it, or some people would say covered up and minimized it into saying an officer.
CBS did some reporting on this. I want to credit them. And they talked to independent experts as well who reviewed the video and said, "Doesn't look like that. It looked like, if anything, a person wearing orange, an inmate." Now, that doesn't mean that inmate then miraculously did other foul play or that you can go that far. But if you've heard the old saying, "A cover-up can be worse than the crime." Whatever the DOJ's reasons, they didn't think and had no reason to think that years later, Congress would do this rare bipartisan thing and force out files from internal reports and grand juries and other records that never come out. So, they did this kind of change and now it's all coming back to blow up in their face. What you're about to see next is more of our report, including some of the video, and it really raises these questions of whether the government, across two administrations, starting with clear errors in the Trump DOJ. People who might like Trump's politics or other things have to accept that this is an obvious error to let this sex trafficker die in prison, or worse, if you suspect foul play, but at a minimum, it's a problem. His attorney general admits it's a problem. A later DOJ says, "Whatever the problem was, because they did criticize issues in the report, it's handled. It's still a suicide. We don't even need to pursue these people we initially charged who worked at the prison." And the new Epstein transparency files show, at best, they were covering up evidence when this is the watchdog report. If you can't trust the watchdogs, who can you trust?
Then you get to the big question here that everyone always asks, which is, "Okay, well, tell me the answer. Tell me the ending." And I'll just say, I keep it real here and when I do these YouTube reports, and you can always subscribe for these kind of breakdowns, we try to do above and beyond our other reporting. You have to follow the evidence. The evidence suggests there was secrecy. There were layers of incompetence. There were things that are basically a type of cover-up. But were they covering up their own mistakes and trying to make something controversial go away? Were they covering up something worse? Was there foul play? The new documents cause a lot of problems for the government, but they don't dispositively answer that. So, I know people have agendas and we like fast narratives and all that. I don't try to do all that. I'm telling you, it's way worse than the government said. It implicates two administrations and we would need a full accounting, an independent type probe, a special counsel, something that actually used the new material but had subpoena power to get to the bottom of this whole thing. Epstein lived his life as a criminal conspiracy. His death clearly became a mystery and the government, across multiple administrations, the way it dealt with it and the way it claimed to put out information while being misleading made that mystery worse.
Coming up, you'll see our report, part of it. And as always, you can subscribe and put questions in the comments and I'll check them out. Stay informed. 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. 10:39 p.m. 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, 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, that 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 an officer appears to walk up the stairway. CBS's Daniel Rutnik 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 tier 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 7 hours. And that's a problem because by then guards had removed Epstein's body. The cell was in disarray.