FIRST

4Chan Had Epstein Death News Before the Press Did: BuzzFeed

Posting included a suspicious amount of detail that later proved to overlap with official statements.

More than 30 minutes before the first journalist tweeted about Jeffrey Epstein’s death on Saturday morning, a post on 4Chan, the anonymous message board popular with white supremacists, announced the news with a suspicious amount of detail. “[D]ont ask me how I know, but Epstein died an hour ago from hanging, cardiac arrest. Screencap this,” the anonymous post read. The author then added more information on the steps taken to resuscitate Epstein that were partially consistent with the information later released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons—suggesting whoever wrote it may have been present at the time. The 4Chan user claimed that first responders attempted to resuscitate Epstein for 40 minutes before he was taken to a hospital, where medical staff continued efforts to revive him for 20 more minutes.

Due to the level of detail included in the thread, the New York City Fire Department looked into whether the poster was a first responder or medical worker, BuzzFeed News reported. “The FDNY reviewed the alleged information and determined it did not come from the Department,” an FDNY spokesperson told The Daily Beast. If a medical professional is found to be responsible, they would be in violation of federal health privacy law. “There’s serious consequences for those violations,” Oren Barzilay, the president of the local union for EMT workers, told BuzzFeed. “Discipline. Suspensions. Civil penalties, etc.”