Barr: Epstein's suicide resulted from 'perfect storm of screw-ups'
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr said in an interview published Friday that the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of sex trafficking, in a secure federal prison resulted from “a perfect storm of screw-ups,” rather than any nefarious act.
Epstein’s death in August at a federal detention center in Manhattan set off a rash of unfounded conspiracy theories on social media that were picked up and repeated by high-profile figures, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. No matter their ideology, the refrain of the theories was the same: Something did not add up.
But investigations by the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general have put to rest those suspicions, proving Epstein’s death was a suicide, Barr said. He said that he personally reviewed security camera footage showing that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died.
On Tuesday, prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging two jail employees, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, who were responsible for guarding Epstein when he died. “We had hoped that the U.S. attorney’s office would make an effort to try to address the systematic failures with respect to the Bureau of Prisons,” he said. “They chose instead to indict Mr. Thomas.”
After Epstein’s death, Barr reassigned the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons and named Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, who ran the prisons bureau from 1992 to 2003, to the post.
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