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The U.S President Donald Trump has insisted he was justified in promoting a baseless conspiracy theory regarding the death of Jeffrey Epstein because the man he retweeted “has half-a-million followers”. On Saturday, Trump shared a tweet by right-wing commentator Terrence K Williams, who baselessly suggested in the video post that the Clinton family had the pedophile financier killed due to former president Bill Clinton’s past association with him. Williams said in a rambling 2-minute diatribe, he said, “He had information on the Clintons and the man ended up dead”. It was posted the same day Epstein was found hanged in his New York prison cell.

The FBI said that it was an apparent suicide. It was reported that 2-guards fell asleep briefly on the night of the 66-year-old’s death, then attempted to falsify records. It is noteworthy that Epstein was facing new sex trafficking and conspiracy charges over allegations he operated an international child sex trafficking ring. He was set to stand trial next year and was facing 45 years in jail if convicted. Trump said when asked by reporters outside his New Jersey golf resort on Tuesday to clarify his retweet of Williams, Trump said, “He’s a big Trump fan. That was a retweet, it wasn’t from me that was from him, but the man has half a million followers, a lot of followers”.
The comments of Trump came after Williams doubled down on his conspiracy theorizing when he sarcastically pretended to try and hang himself on video with toilet roll to purportedly show Epstein could not have killed himself. Williams was cut short by Fox News during an interview last year for being overtly racist. He called an Asian-American New York Times journalist “Crazy-nose” and said there was something wrong with them fortune cookies that Ling Ling’s eating. Trump also said, “I want a full investigation, and that’s what I absolutely am demanding”.