TO SAY THE LEAST

Bill Barr: Epstein Death Was a ‘Perfect Storm of Screw-Ups’

The attorney general expressed concern over the numerous irregularities at the Manhattan jail where Epstein was being held.

Attorney General William Barr said disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide inside a Manhattan federal correctional facility was a “perfect storm of screw-ups.” Barr made the comments in an interview with the Associated Press aboard a flight to Montana on Thursday. Barr said the FBI and Justice Department investigated the death after reports of numerous irregularities at the facility where Epstein took his life and that he personally reviewed security footage that confirmed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died. “I can understand people who immediately... whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups,” Barr said. Two correctional officers have been charged with falsifying prison records at the jail the night Epstein died. Instead of checking on the high-profile inmate every 30 minutes, the guards were allegedly shopping for furniture and motorcycles online. Barr dismissed the theory that Epstein was killed, saying instead that he should have had a cellmate. “I think it was important to have a roommate in there with him and we’re looking into why that wasn’t done, and I think every indication is that was a screw-up,” Barr said. “The systems to assure that was done were not followed.”