AG Barr: Epstein Death “Perfect Storm of Screw-ups”
AG William Barr meets with DOJ officials. Photo by The United States Department of Justice [Public domain]
Attorney General William Barr said he initially had his own suspicions about financier Jeffrey Epstein’s death while behind bars at one of the most secure jails in America but came to conclude that his suicide was the result of “a perfect storm of screw-ups.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said his concerns were prompted by the numerous irregularities at the New York jail where Epstein was being held. But he said after the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general continued to investigate, he realized there were a “series” of mistakes made that gave Epstein the chance to take his own life.
“I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups,” Barr told the AP as he flew to Montana for an event.
Barr’s comments come days after two correctional officers who were responsible for guarding the wealthy financier when he died were charged with falsifying prison records. Officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas are accused of sleeping and browsing the internet — shopping for furniture and motorcycles — instead of watching Epstein, who was supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.
Epstein took his own life in August while awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.
His suicide cast a spotlight on the federal Bureau of Prisons, which has been plagued by chronic staffing shortages and outbreaks of violence. The indictment unsealed this week against the officers shows a damning glimpse of safety lapses inside a high-security unit
This will, of course, have precisely zero effect in settling down those pesky “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself!” feelings many folks have.
The problem with Occam’s Razor is that it is very boring. I have never been one for conspiracy theories. It seems to me that the really complicated ones would require so many people to maintain silence. Have conspiracy theorists ever met people? We love to gab. It makes more sense that thousands of people worked very hard to get people unto the moon than dozes/hundreds/thousands maintained a decades long silence that we faked it.
Humans generally fuck-up a lot. I am not surprised that Epstein’s suicide was the product of a bunch of random screw-ups coming into concert with each other and giving Epstein a window of opportunity to commit suicide. Yet this is psychologically unsatisfying and perhaps distressing for many people. Narrative is more interesting and provides catharsis. A perfect storm of screw-ups makes us wrestle with the fact that a lot of life might just be random chaos.Report
“the really complicated ones would require so many people to maintain silence”
Is there any evidence that people who talked about the Epstein story have been punished for doing so?Report
Yes. It’s a dull thing.Report
Hanlon’s razor may be more appropriate here.Report
Posted over at Balloon Juice, shortly after my last comment
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/11/22/the-noble-duke-of-york/
“After a terrible interview with the BBC where he claimed that he liked to fly in Epstein’s private jet but he didn’t actually fuck any young girls, blah blah lie blah, his mom the Queen sacked him, and polite society is shunning him.”
Apparently at least one person is facing an infinitesimal amount of consequences for their behavior.Report
HRM doesn’t fish around and Andrew fished up and is entirely vestigial to the Monarchy.Report
The tabloids are calling him “Randy Andy” and worrying over how his fall will financially affect his daughters. I didn’t read on in detail because I was looking at the pictures of the pair and wondering if the British mental health system is also responsible for designing women’s hats.Report
I don’t think he was murdered. But I do like seeing some of his rich and famous friends squirm.Report
Every facet of this story has looked suspicious from the beginning. People could readily see the convenience of his death. Some people were inevitably going to reach conspiracy theories. The fact is, we live in an age where nearly everything is explainable by a conspiracy theory. Every politically significant event, anyway. I don’t know what there is to do about it. Nothing, probably.
Do we try to regulate this sort of thing? I don’t think we can, consistent with freedom of speech. Do we even want to? No. The fact is, sometimes there is value in complex theories that mostly get it wildly wrong.
Keeping our values paramount over our social sanity is a huge challenge. I don’t have any solutions to offer. Legal issues are going to trump almost every idea. Lots of people are going to be exposed to lots of weird thinking as a result.
However, we can hope. I do think that people can be encouraged to start using critical thinking skills. Maybe if we get some forceful statements from our leaders to that effect it would help. Some people will never be convinced in this case, precisely because the death was so convenient. Eventually, though, we’re going to have to come to terms with the phenomenon. Leaving conspiracy theories out there unchallenged, as we’ve seen, simply allows them to blossom and metastasize. Far better that, as here, even flawed messengers deliver direct refutations so that these destructive ideas don’t go unchallenged.Report
Burt, Epstein’s existence was a conspiracy theory.Report
I wonder how many people are going to read my comment before they get it.Report
Hah. I would never have noticed without your hint.Report
I thought “I didn’t get it…” and then read it again and didn’t get it…
And then I read it again and then I yelled “OH!” and I got it.Report
Maybe we need a Victims’ Commissioner.
“The Victims’ Commissioner is demanding that the Metropolitan Police explain its decision not to pursue a full investigation into claims a teenager was trafficked to the UK to have sex with Prince Andrew.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/23/metropolitan-police-faces-new-questions-trafficked-teen-prince-andrew-panoramaReport
“We didn’t have the goods.”Report
Why am I suspicious of the “official story”.
The Gulf of Tonkin
The US Liberty “incident”
Iran Contra
All the shitty stuff the us has done internationally in supporting oppressive gov’ts while talking world peace at the UN
The Japanese Internment during WW2
The shady stuff Roosevelt did to get us into WW2 while lying about staying out on the campaign trail.
………Report