Jeffrey Epstein’s brother has said he “laughed” when he heard the Trump administration’s latest assertions about the late-financier’s case.
Mark Epstein, speaking to NewsNation host Chris Cuomo on Tuesday, honed in on comments from FBI Director Kash Patel, who did a 180 on his previously held beliefs and said that he has come around to the idea that the sex offender killed himself as he awaited trial on trafficking charges in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
“When Kash Patel came out with that statement, I laughed at how stupid it was,” Mark Epstein said.
The comments came after Cuomo asked Epstein why he does “not believe what the Trump administration is putting out about your brother.”
On Monday, the Department of Justice disappointed conspiracy theorists worldwide when the agency declared that Epstein did indeed die by suicide and had not kept an incriminating “client list.”
Explaining his dismay, Epstein called into question whether Patel is qualified to talk about the issue of how his brother died.
“Well, every time they say something or do something to try to quash the fact that he was most likely murdered, they just put their foot further down their mouths,” he said, sending a shot across the bows of the administration.
He then highlighted a televised Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in May, where Patel was forced to admit: “I believe he hung himself in a cell.”
“I mean, for instance, Kash Patel in the congressional hearing, you know, he listed his credentials as a prosecutor and other such things and he said that it was a suicide. He said, ‘You know a suicide when you see it.’ You know, that’s basically what he said,” Epstein explained.
He then listed his two-part problems with Patel’s comments. “So the question that popped into my mind was, first of all, number one, how many suicides has he seen? Number one. Two, is he a forensic pathologist? Does he have a medical degree? Does he have a certificate that he passed a CPR course? Does he have a Boy Scout merit badge for first aid? What is he basing his expertise on?”
He then brought up the two medical examiners who were present for his brother’s autopsy, Dr. Kristin Roman and Dr. Michael Baden. The latter was sent by Mark Epstein. Neither were able to reach a firm conclusion as to how the financier died, and his brother claimed in the Cuomo interview that both of the professionals thought his death looked like a homicide.
“Contrast that [Patel’s reversal] to Dr. Roman, who was a city pathologist who did the autopsy; she came out of the autopsy and said she couldn’t call it a suicide because it looked too much like a homicide. Dr. Michael Baden, who was there on my behalf, who witnessed the autopsy, also concurred that it looked more like a homicide than a suicide,” he said.
“Now, was Kash Patel in that autopsy room? No. Was Kash Patel in the prison when they found Jeffrey? No, I don’t think so, and if he was there that raises an even bigger question.”
Patel, the FBI’s Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi all took heat for their handling of the case after Axios published details from a leaked a Department of Justice memo revealing that case was essentially closed.
