When he was arrested on 6 July 2019, Jeffrey Epstein became the world's most high-profile prisoner.
It was rumored that many rich and powerful people, including past and present U.S. presidents, plus at least one or two foreign intelligence agencies, would benefit if he never faced trial.
Keeping him alive should have been easy, especially after he was placed in the virtually "suicide-proof" Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City, where a prisoner had not taken their own life for more than 20 years.
Following an alleged suicide attempt on 23 July 2019 (which he claimed was an attempt on his life), Epstein was placed temporarily on suicide watch (with a camera in his cell).
Even after he was taken off that suicide watch, the facility's chief psychologist made clear that Epstein should always have a cellmate and never be left alone.
Knowing the dangers he faced, the officer in charge of the day watch at the Special Housing Unit (SHU) created a sign typed in all-caps that read:
"MANADATORY ROUNDS MUST BE CONDUCTED EVERY 30 MINUTES ON EPSTEIN #76318-054 AS PER GOD!!!!"
The idea that Epstein's cellmate Efrain "Stone" Reyes would be transferred to Queens, that Epstein would be left alone with the bedsheets to hang himself with, that 10 of the SHU's 11 cameras would malfunction, that both of the guards on duty the first night Epstein was left alone would simultaneously fall asleep, that 16 half-hourly checks on Epstein would be skipped, seemed unthinkable.
On the morning of 10 August 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell
From the outset, people wondered if Epstein really killed himself.
After Trump Attorney General Bill Barr quickly shut down four investigations into Epstein's death, the idea that the man who masterminded the Mueller Report cover-up — and whose cover-up credentials date back to the days of Iran-Contra — was at it again was hard to shake.
At the time, Bill Barr assured us quite literally there was to nothing to see here.
In the weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, in August 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr said his "personal review" of surveillance footage clearly showed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed.
Even during the Biden years when Merrick Garland was the Attorney General, the Office of the Inspector General at the DOJ assured us in 2023, that it truly was just a:
Combination of negligence, misconduct, and outright job performance failures ... (which) contributed to an environment in which arguably one of the BOP’s most notorious inmates was provided with the opportunity to take his own life.
As that report documents, Epstein was found with an orange sheet around his neck after having been left alone and unmonitored in his cell for eight hours while surrounded by "an excessive amount of bed linens."
Now, however, reports The Independent:
Newly-released inspection reports from the Department of Justice (DoJ) reveal that a surveillance camera captured an orange figure apparently heading in the direction of Epstein’s cell.
In a direct contradiction of the story told by Bill Barr in 2019, the paper cites an FBI analysis of the footage that states:
"A flash of orange looks to be going up the L Tier stairs - could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that Tier."
This new video evidence — when added to all the new details contained in the most recent Epstein document dump — makes clear the extent to that Trump and his closest associates have lied about the life and death of Jeffrey Epstein while going to great, even illegal, lengths to conceal the mountains of evidence against Epstein's co-conspirators.
For years, Team Trump has deceived the country, delayed justice, and — knowingly and cruelly — betrayed the Epstein survivors.
Some victims, like Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Carolyn Andriano, died without ever seeing justice.
Those who know the most have lied the most
Trump, of course, has lied every step of the way and for the most obvious reasons.
In his Substack newsletter, Greg Olear has made a convincing case that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel were "pre-bribed" with Trump Media stock to ensure their future loyalty. The wealth they derived from their multiyear professional connection to Trump and his business should have triggered their mandatory recusal from anything related to Jeffrey Epstein. (But of course, it didn't.) Bondi's lies have been apparent from early on. When the time came, Patel was even willing to lie under oath to Congress to protect Trump.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, should also have recused himself (but didn't). Instead, he became Ghislaine Maxwell's new BFF and then repeatedly broke the law in refusing to adhere to the requirements and deadlines of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He's still lying about the case — and still refusing to comply with the act Trump signed into law last year.
Howard Lutnick, Epstein's longtime next-door neighbor on East 71st Street in NYC and Trump's current Commerce Secretary, lied about his relationship with Epstein as recently as last October. Lutnick told the New York Post's Miranda Devine that he was so repulsed by Epstein's perverted lifestyle that he cut off all communications with the notorious child sex trafficker in 2005. He insisted that it would have been impossible for anyone who knew Epstein well enough to socialize with him or do business with him for any length of time — e.g. himself or Donald Trump — to claim ignorance of the notorious child rapist's lifestyle. Newly released documents show Lutnick was in business with Jeffrey Epstein as recently as 2014 — and even made a trip to Epstein Island in 2012.
Which brings us to Bill Barr (and his dad)
Like many in Trump's orbit, Bill Barr also appears in the Epstein Files.
But, in addition to his allegedly being a witness to the rape of an Epstein victim, there are 5 additional facts that make Bill Barr's involvement in the Epstein case — and the ongoing cover-up — unique:
- A family connection to Epstein that dates back to the 1970s
- His decision to "unrecuse" himself from the 2019 Epstein prosecution
- His failure to keep Epstein alive
- His refusal to even consider evidence that indicated Epstein didn't kill himself
- The lies he told along the way
In 2019, Bill Barr was not only the man overseeing every institution responsible for what happened to Jeffrey Epstein at the time of his arrest in New York City on sex trafficking charges and his subsequent death in federal custody — including the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice, and the investigative agencies tasked with determining the cause of death.
Barr was also the son of the man who, 45 years earlier, years before Ghislaine Maxwell arrived on the scene, first introduced Jeffrey Epstein to hundreds of young children – and their rich and powerful parents – when he hired Epstein to teach at The Dalton School, just twenty blocks north of the Upper East Side mansion Epstein would later make notorious.
As Trump's Attorney General in 2019, Barr gave a sign that he was aware of the importance of establishing public trust in the way the Epstein case was handled when he initially recused himself from Epstein matters.
But then he "unrecused" himself, saying he was only referring to matters related to the 2008 plea deal in Florida because he had later worked for a law firm that had worked on that case.
Following Epstein's death in Barr's custody, experts such as Joyce White Vance argued that Trump's AG should recuse himself again.
Instead Barr made himself the poster boy of the cover-up, ensuring that any later inconsistencies, new evidence, or unanswered questions would inevitably be interpreted through a lens of doubt.
The multi-decade Epstein-Barr connection
As TIME Magazine reported in 1971, Donald Barr, headmaster of The Dalton School from 1964-1974, was "bumptious and bright, by turns pompous and ingenuous."
Before arriving at the progressive NYC school he had written and "opinionated article" in which he:
"Flayed teen-age sex ('robots in heat') and roasted permissive parents. 'The trouble with many children,' he declared, 'is that their fathers are mothers and their mothers are sisters.'"
Donald Barr was also, apparently, as racist as Trump, with people accusing him "keeping black and Puerto Rican students out of the school."
In addition to his role at Dalton, Donald Barr was also a science-fiction novelist, best remembered for Space Relations, a tale that imagined a decadent interstellar society built around sexual slavery, coercion, and the exploitation of young people.
In 1974, three years after TIME covered the "intramural school brawling" at The Dalton School — and shortly before he left to teach at Hackley School — Donald Barr decided to hire a young, horny, and distinctly unqualified young man to teach math and science to his unsuspecting Dalton students.
His name was Jeffrey Epstein. And he turned out to be, as The New York Times would report in 2019, the kind of teacher "willing to violate the norms in his encounters with girls."
Barr failed to protect Epstein, ignored vital evidence — and lied repeatedly to the American people
Trump Attorney General Bill Barr may have been quick to shut down the investigations into the suspicious circumstances surrounding Epstein's death. But those who knew the sex trafficker best continue to assert that Epstein didn't — and wasn't the type to — kill himself.
Among those who insist that Epstein didn't kill himself are:
- Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, who rejects the suicide verdict and continues to call for a new investigation.
- Michael Baden, the pathologist hired by Mark Epstein to observe his brother's autopsy, who insists it was a homicide.
- Ghislaine Maxwell, who told a TV interviewer in 2023, "I believe he was murdered." She told Todd Blanche she still doesn't believe it was suicide in 2025.
- Anouska de Georgiou, an Epstein survivor who recently told the BBC that Ghislaine Maxwell had also trafficked her to Trump and told Meidas Touch this month that Epstein "would never kill himself."
Even Donald Trump, who was both Bill Barr's former boss and Epstein's longtime best friend, openly questioned the suicide verdict in a 2020 interview with Axios, asking: "Was it suicide? Was he killed?"
The question still remains: Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself?
Bill Barr's refusal to recuse himself from the cause-of-death investigations in 2019 looks even more suspicious in the wake of the latest allegations about his possible attendance at Epstein events, (including his being a possible witness to at least one rape).
Barr's claim that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night of Epstein's death has now been blown apart.
And if Barr's involvement didn't create enough of a "lens of doubt" already, the words and actions of Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Todd Blanche and Howard Lutnick in recent months mean the credibility of the White House and the DOJ in regards to Epstein has been completely shattered.
The repeated lies and foot-dragging of the president and his top lieutenants have made it crystal clear that the Epstein cover-up has roots that are buried deeper and spread wider within Trump's inner circle than we previously knew.
Back in 2019, when Epstein died on Trump's watch, the president was eager to share tweets promoting the conspiracy theory that the Clintons were involved.
Today, the idea that Epstein was part of the "Clinton Body Count" seems more and more unlikely, given Bill and Hillary's eagerness to testify publicly to Congress.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is once again urging everyone to just move on, is doing nothing to ease the suspicions of those who question whether Jeffrey Epstein is a name that should be added to the "Trump Body Count."
A new ad released on SuperBowl Sunday by Epstein survivors makes clear that they are not ready to move on.
In a recent interview with News Nation, Mark Epstein reiterates his belief that his brother was murdered.
"More autopsy facts will be coming out in February" he promises.
These facts, he says, will prove once and for all that Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
Thanks for reading! While paid subscriptions are always welcome, I’m continuing to offer all content free, so choosing a “free” subscription means you'll never miss an issue of UNPRECEDENTED. Or choose your subscription rate with the special offer buttons below.
To support this newsletter without subscribing, consider a one-time tip at Buy Me a Coffee.
Subscribe to Unprecedented
Subscribe to the newsletter and unlock access to member-only content.