By PERKIN AMALARAJ
Around 11 hours of CCTV footage taken from inside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York City on August 9 and 10 2019 has been publicly revealed for the first time, amide a probe into his death.
Following his arrest on multiple charges, including sex trafficking, he was found unresponsive in his cell early in the morning of August 10 and was later declared dead in hospital.
Coroners at the time ruled he had committed suicide by hanging, and now an FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation into his death has concluded the same.
The footage, released as part of the investigation, appears to shows the orange-clad paedophile being led to his cells by a guard and being trailed by a second one at 7.49pm on the night of August 9.
The trio were apparently seen walking across common area as the move to Epstein's cell in the video, released to US news site Axios.
The DoJ said that while the footage doesn't show his cell door, it would capture anyone moving to it.
And other than the guards leaving, no one else walks to or from Epstein's cell.
The joint investigation has concluded that Epstein was not murdered, nor did he blackmail powerful figures or keep a 'client list.'
The well-connected financier and Maxwell kept a wide circle of friends from fellow billionaires to politicians like Trump and Clinton, and entertainment icons.
The memo from the FBI and DOJ announced that no one involved in the Epstein case will follow former right-hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell to prison, as no further charges will be filed.
Epstein's death led to several conspiracy theories and a general hunger for knowledge regarding his crimes.
In May, the FBI's deputy director Dan Bongino confirmed the footage was set to be released, following a campaign pledge by US president Donald Trump.
The issue of Epstein's death has charged many in Trump's sphere.
In March, his attorney general Pam Bondi released hundreds of pages detailing information connected to Epstein, claiming to have disclosed 'a lot of names' and flight logs that would 'make you sick.'
The first wave of documents have largely been circulating in the public domain for years and so far are yet to include any new bombshells, leading to great disappointment from the public.
'What you're going to see, hopefully tomorrow, is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information,' Bondi previewed on Fox.
'But, it's pretty sick what that man did, along with his co-defendant,' referring to Ghislaine Maxwell.
The officially declassified material included flight logs, Epstein's infamous contact book, an evidence list and a masseuse list in ten different links posted to the Department of Justice website.
The contact list, which has previously circulated in various forms, shows redacted information for dozens of the Hollywood, political and fashion elite and was purportedly compiled by Epstein and his longtime confidante Maxwell. Personal contact information was redacted throughout the list.
FBI Director Kash Patel had been a skeptic of the official findings behind Epstein's death, however, he told Joe Rogan that since he'd taken over the bureau, he hadn't found 'what you want,' which he described as 'some guy or gal committing felonies.'
'If I had it, I'd be the first guy to bring this case hard and fast,' Patel claimed.
He added that his team at the FBI has viewed everything they have been given lawful access to from the infamous island.
Epstein's 'pedo island' aka Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands was a focal point of his horrific child-sex-trafficking operation.
It has long been believed that Epstein hosted a wide array of rich and famous clients at the island.
Patel said that the bureau is doing the best that they can and encouraged anyone with information to get in touch.
'I got here 100 days ago. I can't be held to account for 20 years of failures,' he said.
Though Patel claimed that his FBI will 'give you everything we can' he does have some boundaries set around Epstein's victims.
'Remember, we're not gonna' re-victimize women. We're not gonna' put that s*** back out there. It's not happening because then, he wins.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
FACT FOCUS: Trump claims cashless bail increases crime, but data is inconclusive
As his administration faces mounting pressure to release Justice Department files related the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, President Donald Trump is highlighting a different criminal justice issue — cashless bail. He suggested in a Truth Social post this week that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has led to rising crime in U.S. cities that have enacted these reforms. However, studies have shown no clear link. Here's a closer look at the facts. TRUMP: 'Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!' THE FACTS: Data has not determined the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. But experts say it is incorrect to claim that there is an adverse connection. 'I don't know of any valid studies corroborating the President's claim and would love to know what the Administration offers in support,' said Kellen Funk, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies pretrial procedure and bail bonding. 'In my professional judgment I'd call the claim demonstrably false and inflammatory.' Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, the main lobbying arm of the cash bail industry, also pointed to a lack of evidence. 'Studies are inconclusive in terms of whether bail reforms have had an impact on overall crime numbers,' he said. 'This is due to pretrial crime being a small subset of overall crime. It is also difficult to categorize reforms as being 'cashless' or not, i.e., policies where preventative detention is introduced as an alternative to being held on bail.' Different jurisdictions, different laws In 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail when the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law abolishing it. The move was part of an expansive criminal justice overhaul adopted in 2021 known as the SAFE-T Act. Under the change, a judge decides whether to release the defendant prior to their trial, weighing factors such as their criminal charges, if they could pose any danger to others and if they are considered a flight risk. Loyola University of Chicago's Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois' new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties. A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes. Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes. A lack of consensus Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates. A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw 'no statistically significant relationship' between bail reform and crime rates. It looked at crime rate data from 2015 through 2021 for 33 cities across the U.S., 22 of which had instituted some type of bail reform. Researchers used a statistical method to determine if crime rates had diverged in those with reforms and those without. Ames Grawert, the report's co-author and senior counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program, said this conclusion "holds true for trends in crime overall or specifically violent crime.' Similarly, a 2023 paper published in the American Economic Journal found no evidence that cash bail helps ensure defendants will show up in court or prevents crime among those who are released while awaiting trial. The paper evaluated the impact of a 2018 policy instituted by the Philadelphia's district attorney that instructed prosecutors not to set bail for certain offenses. A 2019 court decree in Harris County, Texas, requires most people charged with a misdemeanor to be released without bail while awaiting trial. The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years. Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney's office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once. A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California's decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy 'caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.' However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase. Many contributing factors It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls. The American Bail Coalition's Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it 'difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.' Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook. 'Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,' he said. 'But there's a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don't necessarily fully understand.'
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
Takeaways: US military enters gray area with expanded role at Mexico-US border
President Donald Trump has thrust the military into a central role in deterring illegal crossings into the U.S. at its southern border. The strategy is playing out in Arizona's border community of Nogales, where an Army scout used an optical scope this week to find a man atop the border wall and sounded the alarm. As the man lowered himself toward U.S. soil between coils of concertina wire, shouts rang out and a U.S. Border Patrol SUV sped toward the wall — warning enough to send the man scrambling back over it, disappearing into Mexico. Such sightings of illegal entry are growing rarer and the rate of apprehensions at the border has fallen to a 60-year low. 'Deterrence is actually boring,' 24-year old Army Sgt. Ana Harker-Molina said, voicing the tedium felt by some soldiers over the sporadic sightings during two days in which The Associated Press embedded with the military on the border. Still, Harker-Molina, an immigrant who came from Panama at age 12 and is now a U.S. citizen, said she believes the deployment of U.S. troops discourages crossings by their mere presence. Military mission expands U.S. troop deployments at the border have tripled to 7,600 and include every branch of the military — even as the number of attempted illegal crossings plummets and Trump has authorized funding for an additional 3,000 Border Patrol agents, offering $10,000 signing and retention bonuses. The military's expanded mission is guided from a new command center at a remote Army intelligence training base alongside southern Arizona's Huachuca Mountains. A community hall there has been transformed into a bustling war room of battalion commanders and staff with digital maps pinpointing military camps and movements along the nearly 2,000-mile border. Until now border enforcement had been the domain of civilian law enforcement, with the military only intermittently stepping in. But since April, large swaths of border have been designated militarized zones, empowering U.S. troops to apprehend immigrants and others accused of trespassing on Army, Air Force or Navy bases, and authorizing additional criminal charges that can mean prison time. The two-star general leading the new mission says troops work closely with U.S. Border Patrol agents in high-traffic areas for illegal crossings — and can deploy rapidly to remote, unguarded terrain. 'We don't have a (labor) union, there's no limit on how many hours we can work in a day, how many shifts we can man,' said Army Maj. Gen. Scott Naumann. 'We can fly people into incredibly remote areas now that we see the cartels shifting' course. Stopping the 'got-aways' At Nogales, Army scouts patrolled the border Tuesday in full battle gear — helmet, M5 service rifle, bullet-resistant vest — with the right to use deadly force if attacked under standing military rules integrated into the border mission. Underfoot, smugglers for decades routinely attempted to tunnel into stormwater drains to ferry contraband into the U.S. Naumann's command post oversees an armada of 117 armored Stryker vehicles, more than 35 helicopters and a half-dozen long-distance drones that can survey the border day and night with sensors to pinpoint people wandering the desert. Marine Corps engineers are adding concertina wire to slow crossings, as the Trump administration reboots border wall construction. Naumann said the focus is on stopping 'got-aways' who evade authorities to disappear into the U.S. in a race against the clock that can last seconds in urban areas as people vanish into smuggling vehicles, or several days in the dense wetland thickets of the Rio Grande or the vast desert and mountainous wilderness of Arizona. The rate of apprehensions at the border is slowing down, Naumann acknowledges. But, he says, it would be wrong to let up, that crossings may rebound with the end of scorching summer weather. 'We're having some successes, we are trending positively,' he said of the mission with no fixed end-date. Militarized zones are 'a gray area' The Trump administration is using the military broadly to boost its immigration operations, from guarding federal buildings in Los Angeles against protests over ICE detentions, to assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida to plans to hold detained immigrants on military bases. Dan Maurer, a law professor at Ohio Northern University and a retired U.S. Army judge advocate officer, says it's all part of a 'muscular' strategy by Trump to show his political base he is serious about a campaign promise to fix immigration. The results are both norm-breaking and unusual, he said. The militarized zones at the border sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that prohibits the military from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil. 'It's in that gray area, it may be a violation — it may not be. The military's always had the authority to arrest people and detain them on military bases,' said Joshua Kastenberg, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and a former Air Force judge.
The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
221 MPs call for Britain to recognise Palestinian state amid starvation in Gaza
Some 221 MPs from across different political parties have joined forces to call on the Government to recognise a Palestinian state. The MPs urge the Government to take the step ahead of a United Nations conference in New York next week. This follows France's announcement on Thursday evening it will formally recognise Palestine at a UN summit in September. The MPs' letter, co-ordinated by Sarah Champion – Labour chairwoman of the International Development Select Committee, said: 'We are expectant that the outcome of the conference will be the UK Government outlining when and how it will act on its long-standing commitment on a two-state solution; as well as how it will work with international partners to make this a reality.' Parliamentarians from Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents are among those who signed the letter. Senior signatories include Labour select committee chairs Liam Byrne, Dame Emily Thornberry and Ruth Cadbury, the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, as well as Tory former minister Kit Malthouse, and Sir Edward Leigh, Parliament's longest-serving MP. The majority of those who have signed, 131, are Labour MPs. Rotherham MP Ms Champion acknowledged 'recognition alone will not end the suffering in Gaza or the rapid expansion of settlements and settler violence in the West Bank'. But she said it would be an important step on the path towards a two-state solution to end the war. The Labour MP added: 'Recognition would send a powerful symbolic message that we support the rights of the Palestinian people, that they are not alone and they need to maintain hope that there is a route that leads to lasting peace and security for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.' Ministers have faced growing calls to recognise a Palestinian state immediately amid mounting global anger over the starving population in Gaza. Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday evening that such a move needed to be part of the 'pathway' to peace in the Middle East, which he and allies are working towards. 'That pathway will set out the concrete steps needed to turn the ceasefire so desperately needed, into a lasting peace,' the Prime Minister said. He added: 'Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that. But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis. The PM also said: 'The appalling scenes in Gaza are unrelenting. 'The continued captivity of hostages, the starvation and denial of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, the increasing violence from extremist settler groups, and Israel's disproportionate military escalation in Gaza are all indefensible. In a statement released on Friday alongside the leaders of France and Germany, the Prime Minister urged 'all parties to bring an end to the conflict by reaching an immediate ceasefire'. Sir Keir, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also called for Israel to stop restricting the flow of aid into Gaza. Charities operating in Gaza have said Israel's blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing people there towards starvation, warning that they are seeing their own workers and Palestinians 'waste away'. Israel says it allows enough aid into the territory and faults delivery efforts by UN agencies, which say they are hindered by Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of security. As he left for Scotland on Friday, US President Donald Trump suggested that Mr Macron's announcement that France would recognise Palestinian statehood was unimportant. 'What he says doesn't matter', Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. Sir Keir will meet the US president during his five-day private trip to Scotland, due to kick off on Friday. US-led peace talks in Qatar were cut short on Thursday, with Washington's special envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of a 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire'. The deal under discussion is expected to include a 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others in phases in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Aid supplies would be ramped up and the two sides would hold negotiations on a lasting truce. Hamas-led militants based in Gaza abducted 251 people in the October 7 attack in 2023 that triggered the war and killed about 1,200 people. Fewer than half of the 50 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive. Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
