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| Jeffrey Epstein |
A prominent attorney with ties to Alabama says he suspects convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide.
David Schoen, who lives in Atlanta and has an office in Montgomery, is best known at the moment as a defense attorney for Donald Trump's impeachment trial. But Schoen visited with Epstein in a New York jail and was poised to become part of his legal team. From a report at Fox News:
Prominent civil rights and criminal defense attorney David Schoen said that he met with sex offender and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in prison, in the days before Epstein's apparent suicide, and he does not believe that the disgraced financer killed himself.
"I saw him a few days earlier," said Schoen on Fox Nation's "Deep Dive" on Thursday. "The reason I say I don't believe it was suicide is for my interaction with him that day. The purpose of asking me to come there that day and over the past previous couple of weeks was to ask me to take over his defense."
Sixty-six-year-old Epstein faced up to 45 years in prison if he was found guilty on charges of sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy.
"We came to an agreement during the course of that discussion," said Schoen, "We met for five hours on Aug. 1. I said that I would want to meet with his team first to see how they felt about that. And then we would go forward. We mapped out a strategy going forward."
"He was upbeat and excited about going forward," Schoen claimed. "The following day, I got a phone call from one of his lawyers saying he just met with him after I met with him. How excited he is about going forward with this. If I could get in that night and start giving orders to the team, it would be a great help."
Schoen is not the only person who saw Epstein as upbeat in his final days:
Schoen's observation of Epstein's mood is corroborated by a fellow inmate of Epstein's who was assigned to monitor the high-profile prisoner while he was on suicide watch.
Epstein was put under 24-hour surveillance after his first apparent suicide attempt at New York City's Metropolitan Correctional Center on July 23.
"He was not depressed," said Bill Mersey in the new Fox Nation documentary "The Final Hours of Jeffrey Epstein." "Although I would have conversations with him and every so often he'd sort of drift off and I'd go, 'Ah, he's thinking about the s---storm he's in the middle of.'"
On Aug. 10, after being taken off suicide watch, Epstein was found unresponsive in his prison cell.
Fox News contributor and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Judith Miller told Fox Nation on "Deep Dive" that Epstein's legal circumstances changed dramatically immediately before this death.
"As we understand now, on the day that he supposedly committed suicide, there were a whole new set of allegations that were becoming public and a whole new set of charges that he was going to have to combat and fight and knock down," said Miller.
"And I think, according to a couple of lawyers he talked too, at that point, he really became discouraged about the prospects of defeating the charges and winning his freedom. He may have been discouraged," she concluded.
"The Final Hours of Jeffrey Epstein," available exclusively on Fox Nation, delved into all of the outstanding questions surrounding Epstein's death, including what Bill Mersey said he was told by another inmate, who claimed to be in the cell next to Epstein's on the night he died.
From a Business Insider account of Epstein's final days:
- The New York Times reported that late, accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein spent his final days trying to use his wealth to manipulate his circumstances inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, leading up to his death by suicide.
- Epstein avoided spending time in his cell by paying lawyers to visit him in a private meeting room for up to 12 hours a day, emptying vending machines at the facility during periods of legal counsel.
- The financier and convicted sex offender also deposited money in other inmates' commissaries to avoid their attention and seemingly devised a way to hang himself without drawing attention in the understaffed facility.The mysterious circumstances surrounding the death by suicide of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein while in federal custody have infuriated the Attorney General, incited the president to spread a baseless conspiracy theory, and intrigued the public.
The New York Times investigated what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein behind bars at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where the convicted sex offender continued to use his wealth to advantage himself, even while held without bail on charges of sex trafficking minors and conspiracy.
Epstein's cell was cramped, musty, and likely infested with vermin, based on interviews with lawyers and other MCC inmates, and the financier may have encountered standing water, with overflowing urine and feces from the facility's faulty plumbing.
To avoid spending time in his cell, Epstein paid for lawyers, including but not limited to his own established legal team, to spend up to 12 hours a day consulting with him in a private meeting room. During their visits, Epstein and his lawyers repeatedly emptied nearby vending machines.
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