The chances of this happening on a high profile case are infinitesimally small. So on the contrary the great claim requiring evidence is that this was a completely normal suicide in prison. Where is the evidence this video was deleted by mistake?
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/10/us/09reuters-peop...
You're claiming that the chances of this are infinitesimally small comes off a bit tautological. It kind of feels like you're /saying/ it's infinitesimally small because /if/ that were in fact true, it /might/ help your claim.
How do you know that?
To me, this is like saying "backups of important data do not become unrecoverable by accident." Except backups (and CCTV footage) is routine, high data volume, and very usually uninteresting, so something going wrong can very easily be missed. And things can go wrong with relatively high frequency--I would not be surprised if most attempts to restore from backups failed.
Also if you missed the latest news stories, they did save the footage for one of them but were given the wrong cell number so they had footage for the wrong floor.
This is just the general level of disorder and incompetence you can expect when you decide not to give a thing the level of funding it needs.
Even if they are ([citation needed] on the claim that the high profile nature of the case decreases the odds of mechanical accident), infinitesimally small events can still happen once. The fact they happened at a time most inconvenient for holding a wealthy man accountable doesn't change the nature of probability.
I'd like links to sensible aggregate sources and discussion. I don't want to have the discussion here.
I'm always so dissatisfied when I ask for evidence for these things.
But there are also serious questions that need to be answered - a very, very long list of serious questions about very important and influential people involved in some very suspicious events that culminated in some very rare and unusual security lapses.
Linking anyone asking those questions to "crackpots" is simply disingenuous.
A classic denialist position is to require a social process and specific outcome in order to challenge their beliefs, in the face of context. Not that it will change our society, in either case.
In this case, there may not be any bulletproof evidence, but everything around the case that could've gone wrong has gone wrong, to the point where it's no longer statistically plausible to be a mistake. Everything in the system had redundancy yet every part of the system "failed".
There were two guards, yet they were both "asleep". They were supposed to check him every 30m yet they didn't check him for hours exactly when he killed himself. He had attempted suicide yet he wasn't on suicide watch. His cell mate was taken away. All the footage and backup were lost.
I guess the closest evidence so far is that the autopsy shows more homicide than suicide, but that isn't much.
Yes, it is indeed a conspiracy theory at this point, but unlike what the internet will have you believe, "conspiracy" != "crackpot theory".
"Hours" means at least 4x longer than the normal period Epstein would have waited for the guards check in on him. Even at the 45 minute point it would be clear to Epstein that the guards were late.
Basic logic would dictate that a guy desiring to commit suicide would make an attempt exactly when it seemed likely to him the guards weren't going to show up for awhile.
So we have two options-- either Epstein was intent on committing suicide (in which case the timing is unremarkable) or he wasn't (in which case the timing is highly suspect). Given that we don't know Epstein's state of mind, and as you point out we don't have much of anything as corroborating evidence, we cannot make heads or tails of the timing. And this is the problem with conspiracy theories. It's simply too tempting to overlook that and jump to the branch that adds more intrigue to the conspiracy.
I find it useful to build a simple gate before jumping to unlock further contemplation. For example, perhaps I read about a statement from a guard claiming they were told not to check on Epstein during that time. Or even a report of some suspicious activity or event at the location that happened around the same time the regular checking procedure got interrupted. Having that gate there ensures that I don't accidentally let unrelated yet intriguing facts fill in for the corroborating evidence I desire.
Further, if someone powerful was worried he'd implicate them, killing him is a terrible way to keep the secret. With him dead, his effects and possessions are now no longer subject to Constitutional privacy protections and the FBI can go over them at its leisure to string together a case against his accomplices or any who used his "services" to arrange illegal sexual encounters.
(... civil trial burden of proof is mere "preponderance of evidence," and IIUC his estate is seeking civil trial, so they may win that case, make of that what one will).
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/08/13/computer-r...
That's a nice, more-memorable riff on Russell's Teapot [0].
Do you have any explanation for that?
It's a matter of probabilities. Surveillance video was prematurely destroyed, twice in a month, in separate incidents and in different ways. Oh and both of those incidents involved the same subject. That is statistically improbable, similar in category if not in actual magnitude, to getting struck by lightning twice. At the very least that should justify and support an investigation kicking into overdrive mode to find direct evidence. And if no such evidence is found, it may nonetheless end up being used as part of a prosecution. Interesting coincidences are always pretty persuasive.