Disgraced pederast Jeffrey Epstien’s suicide on Saturday kicked off the Olympic Games of conspiracy theories.  Twitter was overwhelmed by people of every political affiliation, status, profession, and nationality speculating wildly on what “really happened” to the convicted sex offender who was reported to have killed himself while in solitary confinement in the Manhattan Correctional Center.

While conspiratorial beliefs are bipartisan, most actual conspiracies fall under liberal or conservative lines. Not this one. It was the Clintons adding to their body count! It was Trump to cover up his crimes! It was Russia, because Russia can do everything! It was the Royal Family! It was Obama! It was Saudi Arabia! It was Alan Dershowitz!

 

 

 

Of course, there are a lot of really good reasons why people think Epstein’s death didn’t come at his own hand, or at least that his suicide had some element of complicity to it.

He was in a position to ruin a lot of powerful people who would have been much safer with Epstein dead than alive. He’d run afoul of the Clintons, which is never a good idea. He’d also attempted suicide once before in prison, and had been reported to be on suicide watch. Meaning that he’d be isolated and watched to the point that someone would have had to have either gotten to him or helped him.

With the news that Epstein likely was NOT on suicide watch, the picture becomes a lot clearer. The most likely possibility is still that Epstein, facing life in prison, the wrath of other prisoners, and the permanent loss of everything that his wealth and power brought, saw the opportunity deny his victims justice – and took it.

Every other theory requires some kind of a leap in logic. Some are small leaps (Epstein paid off the prison let him kill himself) and some are bigger leaps (the Clintons arranged to have him killed, and Trump’s DOJ allowed it to happen?).

And some require leaps in logic over the moon and all the way to Mars. These are the conspiracy theories that Epstein faked his own death in order to break out of prison, be smuggled to Guantanamo Bay, or be transferred to a different prison to keep him safe after he cut a deal with the white hats.

Naturally, QAnon gurus and followers jumped all over this. After all, neither the most prevailing conspiracy theories – that Trump had Epstein killed to silence him, or Clinton had Epstein killed and Trump’s DOJ allowed to happen – look good for either Trump or the Q team.

If Trump is a super secret genius working with Q to take out the pedos, he can’t allow his star witness to die. And the other, that Trump has something truly horrible to hide, is unthinkable to the slavish Trump worshipers that make up Q’s boomer throng.

And so, body double/faked suicide/Q team extraction it is! Meaning that Epstein is either still alive and just ensconced somewhere else, or was taken to Gitmo for execution.

Conspiracy theories catch on because they’re necessary to explain something that defies explanation. And Epstein’s suicide utterly defies explanation. How does a high-profile prisoner who has attempted suicide before get the means to try again? How was he left alone? Who had the authority to take him off suicide watch? Did he speak to anyone before his suicide? Did anyone see him who wasn’t supposed to?

All of these are reasonable questions. And to be honest, they probably have pretty banal answers. But Epstein was a person of such means, who did such terrible things, that banal answers just don’t cut it. He couldn’t have “just” killed himself because he mistakenly was taken off suicide watch. It “has” to be something else. And because Q is so ensconced in the greatness of Donald Trump, and of his Attorney General William Barr, the explanation can’t in any way implicate the White House.

So the conspiracy theories need to be even more outlandish, even crazier, and even harder to pull off.

These theories fail for a number of reasons. The least of which is that there’s no evidence at all that any are true. They also don’t make any sense and don’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

If Epstein was being taken to Gitmo, why would it require such a charade? Why not just take him?

If he was somehow “replaced” and smuggled out of the prison, wouldn’t that require the knowledge of almost every person who worked there?

What was the point of the “white hats” allowing him to be put in prison in the first place? Does his faked death keep him safer than just leaving him where he is? Why not just have him disappear without the prison charade?

And if the body double was deployed (by who???) to allow Epstein to escape, wouldn’t that be a catastrophic failure on the part of Trump, Barr, and the DOJ? How does THAT fit in with the “12-D chess” profile that Q followers have invented for Trump?

Don’t expect the QAnon followers passing these theories around to try to answer these questions. Because they don’t have answers that make anyone look good. It’s actually much easier to believe Epstein simply committed suicide in prison than believe he was smuggled out by the good guys or bad guys for some reason. But when you’ve been radicalized by YouTube and QAnon and Alex Jones and Fox News to “question everything,” you can’t just accept such a simple explanation. You have to have one that’s more complicated, that fits more with your warped world view.

And if your world view is that Trump can do no wrong, and that nothing happens by accident, then nothing that happened to Epstein could have been an accident.