Following the death of disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, MSNBC hosts have offered a variety of theories tying the incident to the Trump administration or to Russia.
MSNBC's AM Joy host Joy Reid suggested Attorney General William Barr could be responsible for the death of disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Authorities say Epstein committed suicide, but alternative theories have proliferated in the time since his his death Friday night. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said the whole situation seemed "predictably Russian," and Reid drew attention to the fact that Epstein was in a federal prison.
"This is somebody who not only is high-profile, who not only knew a lot of high-profile people, whose papers just came out of court just to let out of some of the documents related to his cases that name high-profile people, who is friends with the current president of the United States, who flew a previous president of the United States around on his plane," Reid said, referencing former President Bill Clinton who flew on Epstein's plane dozens of times. "This is on the same level of a Bill Cosby. This is a famous person who's now in prison. He knows a lot about a lot of people...His only out at this point would to talk about those people. So, he's in this very vulnerable situation."
She went on to say she learned earlier in the segment about how the facility where Epstein, who was facing federal sex trafficking charges, was being held was under the control of the Department of Justice. He was restricted to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan after he was found unconscious in his cell last month with marks on his neck.
"This Department of Justice does not exactly inspire confidence. Let's just be blunt. William Barr's Justice Department is not one you can readily simply rely upon and feel confident in," Reid said. "What do we make of all of this now that in this federal facility this person was allowed to be alone long enough to either harm himself or be killed by some—we don't know what happened. We just don't know."
Grabien's Tom Elliott noted how Reid threw out another conspiracy theory later in the segment about Barr potentially trying to help Trump avoid implication in the Epstein scandal. While Trump has been pictured with Epstein in 1992, 1997, and 2000 and knows several people in his orbit, Trump said, "I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you" last month.
"Donald Trump’s name comes up whenever Jeffrey Epstein’s name comes up and other people, too. He’s no longer a threat to those people because he can’t talk about them anymore," Reid said. "I think one of the reasons people feel a lot of skepticism here is he’s deprived these girls of justice, young women of justice, but he now goes silent."
Scarborough, host of Morning Joe, took to Twitter earlier in the morning to suggest Russians are involved.
"A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably...Russian," Scarborough tweeted.
https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1160184410588758018?s=20
Scarborough also retweeted an account that said, "Hey, folks, we’re Russia now. Enjoy it."
Epstein suicide. Sure. Seems likely. Probably what happened.
Hey, folks, we’re Russia now. Enjoy it.
— Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman) August 10, 2019
MSNBC personality John Heilemann quote-tweeted the same tweet and included a Russian flag emoji.
https://twitter.com/jheil/status/1160195848720064513?s=20