this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death observed an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2019.

That entry in an observation log of the video from the Metropolitan Correctional Center appears to suggest something previously unreported by authorities: "A flash of orange looks to be going up the L Tier stairs — could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that Tier."

It also appears, according to an FBI memorandum, that reviews by investigators led to disparate conclusions by the FBI and those examining the same video from the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General.

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[–] jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ken Lacorte

The former...Fox News executive? Who killed the Trump-Stormy story before the 2016 election... uhhh.. yeah im not fucking trusting that dude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_LaCorte#Alleged_Fox_News_Trump_cover-up

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That document is laughable. In only the first few paragraphs, I ran across reliable indicators of pseudoscience scams, like asserting that there's some "scientific establishment" that he's up against. Not a very powerful mafia then, because there are tons of dipshits pushing the lab leak hypothesis. Then, there's the Absence of Evidence Fallacy. (It is not evidence of absence.) That's as far as I got.

Go ahead and call me closed-minded, but c'mon, Ken should put his best evidence up front. If he has it, which I doubt. Especially when the alternative explanation is so damn plausible: The Wuhan Institute for Virology was put in Wuhan to study the viruses in local wildlife because Chinese authorities recognized the potential for human transmission, and so they built a lab to study the viruses. And that's why the lab would've had the virus in it. Maybe it did have a leak, and some infections came from there, but biological systems are messy and imprecise; the virus probably jumped to humans many, many times over many years, and set up the conditions for a pandemic.

Consider the HIV/AIDS epidemic in North America. We used to think that it all traced back to Patient 0, a flight attendant who liked to get busy around the world. Then, researchers found the virus in stored blood samples going back to the 1950's. The virus had been in the human population for decades before blowing up.

Reality is often complex, without intuitively-clear lines of cause and effect. The abstract thinking needed to understand it is beyond many people, so they latch on to simple, obvious, and wrong explanations, like the lab leak theory.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

propublica looked at the lab leak evidence and it is pretty likely that was it. The senate collected a lot of the information, which has better investigative powers than a news organization, but they got their hands on a lot of email from the wuhan and virology people and the national health and the like and the messaging all but said it got away from them there.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Indeed, it seems plausible. The background of my comment is that the lab-leak dipshits are the ones who push the idea with a subtext implying that the lab created the virus, or cultivated it for bioweapon purposes. But genetic studies show that it clearly came from wild animal populations, so I very strongly doubt the lab was the first and only introduction into the human population.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

lab-leak dipshits are the ones who push the idea with a subtext implying that the lab created the virus, or cultivated it for bioweapon purposes.

The idea is not science fiction Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research.

The question is whether or not this project (or something similar) was moved to China to avoid government oversight.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 1 points 22 hours ago

A lot of the loudest lab leakers were arguing in bad faith and just incidentally might have been right somewhat I think. The origin of the virus almost certainly was from the exotic animal trade, which remains an existential threat to health, as it brings endangered animals to extinction for cures that don't work, and dredges up new viruses.

That said, we should leave well enough alone after we find these things. These gain of function tests of viruses are reckless even with proper lab security. The sad truth of the matter however, is that for military purposes we dig up these viruses and find ways to weaponize them for doomsday viruses, along with vaccines.

One would think we already have doomsday covered but it's like collecting billions of dollars it's never enough I guess.

I as well heard the lab leak proponents talking about proof it's been weaponized, and read that's incorrect, idk all the details I stopped following it after a while. But the lab leak people are out of their minds, a good share of them, the joe rogans of the group are cynical and delusional manipulators with an axe to grind to be sure. But we should use this as a wake up call to put more of a leash on bio weapons programs, even if the escaped virus here was not that, half the reason it was brought to the lab from some unfortunate pangolin in the first place was the desire for new bio weapons.

We aren't in need of new doomsday weapons we have plenty already. And we need to focus more on lab security of all such projects, here in the US we have gotten lucky with communicable diseases escaping bio controlled facilities as well. People assume we run secure operations and it's not necessarily true unfortunately.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

Also consider that COVID-19 is just “SARS 2”, and we know that coronaviruses exist in nature already and this ain’t the first time one has mutated this way…Occam’s razor is that a lab wasn’t needed for this to happen.

We bungled the detection/response and it spread. Largely due to misinformation and inaction of authorities.

Simple as.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Alleged accusations. Its the reporters word against his. Maybe it was for trump, maybe the evidence wasn't strong enough and Lacorte wanted to avoid a Trump lawsuit. You could argue that is a conspiracy in itself.

And discrediting the Ken Lacorte portion on my comment, the other 2 conspiracies are still valid. My point is we cannot dismiss information just because it is labeled as a conspiracy. For example, if trump rigs the midterms and wins, he will very likely call accusations of his rigging a "leftist conspiracy." The truth is often somewhere between the conspiracy and the narrative.

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

Alleged accusations.

I'm not sure you know what that word means. Did the accusations happen or not?