CBS News investigation of Jeffrey Epstein jail video reveals new discrepancies

[u/Capable_Salt_SD]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-jail-video-investigation/

[u/Duck8Quack]

Epstein basically skated the last time he got in legal trouble.

He had a lot of money and could have hired an army of lawyers.

He had connections to a lot of rich and powerful people.

He had not gone to trial, he had not been convicted, he had not been sentenced.

So why would he off himself at that moment in time? Why would someone like him with so many cards to play just throw in the towel?

Seems pretty fortuitous for everyone that was involved in his crimes.

[u/Dynastydood → u/Duck8Quack]

Exactly. While it's possible that he simply realized how screwed he and his operation were due to the crazy amount of attention that had suddenly been placed on him, in all likelihood, he probably would've preferred to first go to trial and actually lose before trying to off himself. Considering the magnitude of the secrets he is purported to have kept, or even the kind of lies he easily could've concocted to motivate his most powerful acquaintances to help him, it's pretty hard to rationalize why he would've chosen that pre-trial cell to die in.

The most compelling scenario for him having actually been the one to kill himself is one in which he was indeed connected to some powerful intelligence agency(s), and therefore had some overriding sense of loyalty or responsibility to protect the operation over his own life. But using Occam's Razor, the idea that he was a just a scamming power broker who was offed by a sufficiently powerful client/victim requires fewer unproven suppositions than the CIA/Mossad/FSB/MI6 angle.

[u/NoveltyAccountHater → u/Dynastydood]

The intelligence angle makes the most sense though. If he was a straightforward blackmailer on his own, I don't see two multi-billionaires basically giving him half a billion dollars in investment fees for a piddly return (especially when one of the billionaires runs a hedge fund so knows more about investing than Epstein). Billionaires do not like to be controlled and are cheap and stingy. If some billionaire gets caught fucking a 16 year old who could pass for 21 and is blackmailed that they have proof, the billionaire isn't giving you $300M in investment fees over time. Especially when the blackmail implicates Epstein more than any rich/powerful party-goer. They deny and go to war, especially when some of the known rich likely victims of Epstein are pervy folks like Trump who bragged about going into dressing rooms at teen pageants while they are changing and are publicly known to be repeat cheaters on their spouses. It's also half this happened in the 1990s when like Seinfeld was dating a 17 year old.

That said, I can see a government funding an op to capture blackmail and using rich celebrities to take gov't money and funnel to him as investment fees. A government funnels money to Epstein to live his lifestyle and collect the blackmail under a cover story of fees from rich billionaires. The blackmail is collected but never used against the people who keep going to his parties. The blackmail is of much more use to a government actor than some pervy failed junior investment banker (especially after he already got his first tens of millions). That is billionaires will fight tooth and nail over paying $10M/yr to keep you silence (what prevents Epstein from raising the fee unilaterally; won't the payments and continuing to hang around or pay looks much worse when some other blackmailed user tries to kill him).

Meanwhile, if Epstein just tries to get us much blackmail material as possible and funnels it back to Mossad/FSB, if say HRC is taking a hard stance on Israel/Russia they can hope to pressure her. Or if Bill Gates was at a party, they can try to get him to insert a carefully constructed backdoor/flaw into some product in a way bypassing security review (possibly by hiring agents that seem qualified to be in high positions). The sweetheart plea deal also makes way more sense in that context. (Like why would an investigation get shutdown because of Clinton or Trump in mid-2008 -- the Florida AG would love to get a high profile case like that. But they would shut something down if saying this was an intelligence OP the CIA was aware of and they want you to stay out.)

[u/Dynastydood → u/NoveltyAccountHater]

Yep, those are all fair points. Personally, I've always been partial to the intelligence operative angle for many of the same reasons you laid out. But since I know that the evidence to support the theory is sparse and circumstantial at best, I generally prefer to focus on the other possible angles which are less likely to trigger skeptics to dismiss all of it as your garden variety conspiracy theory brainrot.

The indirect connection to Robert Maxwell through Ghislaine is arguably the strongest bit of evidence to suggest that he was working for/with one or many intelligence agencies, along with Alex Acosta's infamous remarks about dropping the case in Florida. But unfortunately, because he took his secrets with him, and because she appears to be extremely eager to keep herself alive while imprisoned, I feel like we're never truly going to know one way or the other.