Katie Miller Grills Trump Deputy AG Todd Blanche About Epstein’s Death: ‘Are You Still Confident’ He Wasn’t Murdered?
On the latest episode of her podcast, Katie Miller grilled Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death, asking him if he was “still confident his death wasn’t a murder?”
In 2019, the deceased child sex predator died in a federal prison while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, but there have been ongoing suspicions that foul play may have been involved, especially since the jail failed to follow its regular procedures for monitoring his cell and the video cameras malfunctioned that night.
After mounting pressure — including from his fellow Republicans — President Donald Trump signed a law last November to release the files related to Epstein and his girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell with a deadline of Dec. 19. The law required a wide release of millions of documents, photos, videos, and other files, with redactions limited to victims’ names and other identifying information.
On Dec. 19, Blanche admitted during an appearance on Fox & Friends that the Department of Justice would not be able to meet the law’s deadline. Since then, there have been additional releases of files that have revealed additional powerful people who were in communication with Epstein, thousands of mentions of Trump, and controversial failures to redact victims’ names and nude images. Congressional committees have continued to investigate, issuing subpoenas to prominent people mentioned in the files and DOJ officials all the way up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Miller, the wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, launched her podcast, The Katie Miller Podcast, last year. She interviewed Blanche on the most recent episode, with a focus on Epstein, including over eight minutes discussing the circumstances around his death (the relevant section begins around the 14:00 mark).
Miller asked Blanche point blank if he thought that Epstein killed himself.
“Do you believe he committed suicide, or do you believe that somebody else killed him?” she asked.
Blanche replied that he had “reviewed all the available evidence regarding his death, and I believe that the conclusion that he committed suicide is based on the — a bunch of independent agencies, including the New York City Medical Examiner, the OCME, and so I have no reason to doubt that conclusion that they reached based upon everything I’ve reviewed.”
He did hedge a bit, continuing: “Now, was I there? Were you there? Nope. And so — but the evidence that that has been accumulated and reviewed since that time says yes, he did commit suicide.”
“One of the guards for Jeffrey Epstein was paid off about $5,000 a few days before the suicide,” Miller followed up. “Have you looked into that?”
Replied Blanche:
I don’t believe it’s “paid off.” I believe there’s information out there that that there was money put into her account, $5,000 or something like this that was investigated by the SEC of New York, by the FBI, by the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Justice, which is a totally separate agency. Ultimately that guard was was charged by the Southern District of New York for the conduct arising out of Mr. Epstein’s death.
And so I know that it was investigated extensively. I believe Congress is investigating now her conduct as well, and I think she’s even potentially testifying around what happened then, and so I feel very confident in that investigation.
“Do the cameras in that jail fail frequently, or just in this specific case?” Miller asked.
Blanche cited the OIG report’s analysis as “detailed exhaustively” regarding the “systematic failures in that prison” that were “separate and apart from the ultimate failure that took place with Mr. Epstein’s death.”
Miller pressed Blanche about the ongoing conspiracies and speculation, asking a series of follow-up questions:
MILLER: The phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” is still a meme for a reason. When people look at the facts, it fuels all kinds of conspiracy theories. Are you still confident his death wasn’t a murder? His own — you know, there was another separate autopsy done on his body which suggests some of the neck injuries were more consistent with a homicide than a suicide. Have you revisited this autopsy again? And are you guys completely confident that he was indeed suicide?
BLANCHE: Yes, we’re confident. And by the way, the way that the manner which he died is unusual. So it’s not a traditional — if an individual commits suicide by hanging — because of the SHU, the special housing unit, where he was housed. There’s not a — there’s no way to, for an individual to hang themselves in the traditional sense like from a ceiling from so he — the evidence that was uncovered by the OCME was that he hung himself from the bunk bed, which is about the same height as his neck. He’s not the first inmate to do that in the federal prison system.
MILLER: Is his autopsy consistent with other inmates who have killed themselves the same way?
BLANCHE: I have not personally examined any other autopsies. My understanding is yes, it is.
MILLER: No time of death was ever determined, only that his body was discovered 6:30 the next morning. Why couldn’t investigators establish a clearer timeline?
BLANCHE: That’s a good question and it’s one of the failures, right? Because the guards were required to do check-ins and they were dishonest about whether they had done them every half hour like they’re required to do. They didn’t do it. And because of that, there’s a large gap of time over the night that nobody checked on him. And at some point in that time period, he died. And so, you’re right. So, the exact time of death was not able to be determined because of that.
MILLER: Some people believe the man who went into the cell that night wasn’t the same as the one on the stretcher, that a body double or switch happened overnight. Has DNA, dental, or fingerprint evidence confirmed that it was indeed Jeffrey Epstein who was buried?
BLANCHE: There is no doubt, not even, not even from — well, there’s no doubt that that absolutely the person that was taken out of the prison cell, the person that was taken to the hospital, the person that was taken to the to to the autopsy by the OCME, is the person that was later given over to his family, was Jeffrey Epstein.
MILLER: Why has none of the guards been held legally accountable?
BLANCHE: Well, they were, two of them were prosecuted, and ultimately there was a non-prosecution agreement entered into by the SDNY, which ultimately leads to charges being dismissed after certain conditions are met. But there certainly was accountability.
Whether that’s the appropriate level of accountability that the American people would expect from that, it’s — this happened in 2019. That was a decision that was made by leadership, you know, in the months and years after that. But there there was accountability in that sense. It may not be the accountability that that you want or that others want, but there was accountability.
MILLER: There’s also new questions about an orange-colored figure going up the stairs towards Epstein’s cell around 10:39 pm the night he died. FBI has said it looks like an inmate, but DOJ IG says it could be a corrections officer carrying bedding. Do you know who that person was?
BLANCHE: I don’t think we know. By the way, the reason why there’s new questions is because of our transparency, is because the FBI and the Department of Justice found different versions of that video and immediately released it to the American public. Right.
So, there is no desire by Director Patel, by the Attorney General, to hide any of this information from the American people. And it’s a great point, Katie, that the failures, the shortcomings that everybody’s identified in that prison, which is now closed, by the way, doesn’t — it’s not in existence anymore, and at least in part because of what happened with Epstein, leads to to this type of — these type of fair questions about what happened that night.
MILLER: If someone was seen going up the stairs around 10:39, wouldn’t that fall within the window when Epstein could have died?
BLANCHE: I think that falls within the window of when he could have died. But just and you — if you accept that he was murdered the same that I’m accepting that he committed suicide, you have to take that to its logical end, right? So you have to — you have that — that means that an individual, maybe this individual or somebody else, was able to get up into the SHU, which is the most secure part of a of the prison system, of the prison in in Manhattan.
Only a few of the guards have keys to get there. The leadership, the COs, the guys that are in charge. All of them were extensively interviewed and questioned and so somebody — if somebody murdered Jeffrey Epstein, it would have been — you also have to accept that that individual was able to do it, is get away from the SHU successfully without being on any cameras, that every single inmate in that facility — nobody saw him, no other guard saw him or her.
I don’t know if it’s a man or woman because you know we don’t know and so I think that, in my view, it is a horrible thing that happened, that the guards didn’t do their job, and that the cameras were not all working properly. But at the end of the day, well, the only thing we can do about that is investigate. That’s what you can do. Like you talk about conspiracy theories, you talk about maybe he killed himself, maybe he didn’t. How do you find that out? You investigate.
And in this case, the Bureau of Prisons investigated, the Southern District of New York investigated, the FBI investigated. None of those people had an axe to grind.
MILLER: But nobody would say that they were confident with how the FBI runs an investigation, nor the SDNY. Just as you say, there’s problems with the jail. There’s definitely problems with investigators and, you know, detectives and frontline people who were — who I also think covered up for some of the actions taken by the elites, so to speak.
BLANCHE: So, okay. But then the OIG, which has a whole different motivation than the FBI, the SDNY, the Bureau of Prisons, the State Police, they also came in and did a complete and thorough investigation and reached the same conclusion. The OCME has nothing to do with the FBI.
Watch the video above via Katie Miller Pod on YouTube.
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