FBI director Kash Patel told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo Sunday night that he reviewed the entire Jeffrey Epstein case file and concluded that the notorious sex trafficker "killed himself" and that "there's no evidence in the case file suggesting otherwise."

“As someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was,” Patel said to Bartiromo. 

Deputy Director Dan Bongino added, "I have seen the whole file. He killed himself."

I don't dispute any of that — and despite my love for a good "Epstein didn't kill himself" meme, I never have. But don't throw away your tinfoil hat just yet.

Conspiracy theories have never been my thing. We landed on the moon, chemtrails aren't a thing, 9/11 wasn't an inside job, etc. Although I don't insist on "Oswald acted alone" like I once did.

But Epstein's suicide still might have received a semi-official sanction — a suicide permitted through institutional indifference, not direct intervention.

And Another Thing: Please, everybody, stop demanding to see "the Epstein list." The idea that Epstein had an actual list — a "Little Black Book of Pedos" or whatever — is ludicrous. Imagine James Bond breaking into SPECTRE headquarters and finding a conveniently located folder labeled "My Evil Plan." Forget fiction. Imagine the FBI raiding the home of a suspected mob killer with a list of his hits stuck to the fridge with a magnet. 

Despite a prior suicide attempt, Epstein was removed from suicide watch and placed on psychological observation. Nevertheless, here's what went wrong that night at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC):

Had any one of these four events not happened, Epstein might have been caught in the act, and his suicide prevented. If you were trying to raise suspicions that Epstein's suicide was actually murder, you could hardly do a better job.

But there's another possibility: what I call the Frankie Five Angels treatment.

I first suggested this might have happened in the weeks following Epstein’s 2019 death.

Frank Pentangeli was a capo (captain) in the Corleone crime family in “The Godfather: Part II.” As a high-ranking member of Michael Corleone’s outfit, Pentangeli knew pretty much all of Mike’s dirty secrets. Frank even knew that it was young Mike himself who had killed NYPD Captain Mark McCluskey (in “The Godfather: Part I”). So when Pentangeli wound up in FBI custody, the Corleones would do almost anything to keep him quiet.

Near the end of G2, Corleone family lawyer Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) visits Frank in prison and has a little chat with him. In a chillingly understated scene, Hagen twists the conversation so that Frank suggests his own suicide, as though it had been his idea all along.

Watch this clip. 

So where do you stand after Patel's interview? Was it murder, suicide, or the Frankie Five Angels treatment?

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