Epstein, Iran, and 2028: Mark Halperin’s Weekly Reality Check

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Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:00)
Mark Halpern is here in the third hour of every Wednesday's program and we always look forward to his appearances.
Mark, in hour one of today's program, Steve Eder from the New York Times was my guest. He shares that four person byline, their very deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein's final 35 days, the 35 days that he spent behind bars. I'm sure you read that analysis and I'm just curious as to what your take is pertaining to it.

**Mark Halperin** (1:27)
I really often will celebrate the New York Times for all their flaws.
Wordle's too easy for one thing.
They do some things like that project that almost no other news organization in the world would do or could do. They really set out to talk to everybody they could talk to, to get documents. So I applaud the effort. And as you know, they came down and basically said, here's 11 things that make absolutely no sense that all point to something strange here, perhaps that he was murdered. But here's two or three things that suggest that a murder would require a vast conspiracy that would have been nearly impossible to pull off. And then they kind of lean into he committed suicide. And I just think that they did such a good job of teasing out the 11 things that make no sense that I didn't really enjoy the way they put their finger down on the side of the scale that said suicide. Because the 11 things are just too many. It's just too many things that are off for us to be settled for a conclusion in the most comprehensive investigation I believe done by anybody, including the government. And if he was murdered, obviously, it's a big story, an important story. And so I wish they'd leaned a little harder into those 11 mysteries.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:43)
So my two word takeaway was, should happens. Because there are things you can weave to... What was that orange blur? Why weren't the cameras working? Oh my God, they put them in the same cell as a guy who was a four time murderer, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like a great bar room conversation where I could convince something, someone that something nefarious took place. But I mean, when you're at the, what is it, the MCC, and it's understaffed and they're lacking resources and it's cold as can be in the summer, counterintuitive, hot as can be in the winter, or did I just reverse that? I mean, the place is, it's a dump, it's not being run properly, and this is what you're gonna get.

**Mark Halperin** (3:23)
Yeah, look, I had somebody with great law enforcement and prison experience send me a message after they heard me talk about this the other day, and they said, Mark, if you've never served in a time or you've never worked in a prison, you can't imagine how screwed up they are. You can't imagine how much things go wrong.
On the other hand, there's just a few too many things here that are suspicious, primarily to me, that he was allowed to be in the cell by himself without a roommate. I just, that one just stands out as something that, could that have happened with a really high profile inmate?
Could, but very, very unlikely based on their own reporting and based on my own reporting with prison officials about someone who they say, you know, one of their big arguments is he was suicidal. There were previous indications he was suicidal. There was allegedly a previous attempt. The prison psychologists really thought he was suicidal. And yet, if that were the case, someone that high profile being left alone in the cell with no roommate, it just, it just bears more scrutiny and understanding. And as great a job as The Times did, they weren't able to talk to everybody. And I still think they made a compelling case how difficult a conspiracy to kill him would have been, but they didn't do a good enough job, in my view, knocking down. You know, I'll give you one example. The thing about one of the two guards who inexplicably was not watching him said, it had been reported she got $5,000 in her account. But then it turned out she regularly gets $5,000 in her account. So that's one that was out there that aroused suspicion in me and others. It turned out not to be true. But most of the things they write about in the story are true, including how inexplicable it was that he was left alone.