Chelsea Manning has appeared to suggest that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.
The 66-year-old financier had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges when he died on August 10, 2019. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges and was being held without bail.
"[Epstein] was found unresponsive in his cell in the Special Housing Unit from an apparent suicide," a statement from the Justice Department said at the time.
"Mr. Epstein was transported... to a local hospital for treatment of life-threatening injuries, and subsequently pronounced dead," the statement added.
At the time, it was reported that he had died by suicide - as it had officially been ruled as such.
In spite of reports confirming that Epstein used a bedsheet in his cell to hang himself, conspiracy theorists continue to argue that the man was murdered - including, apparently, whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
The billionaire is believed to have denied having any suicidal ideations before his death, despite some members of prison staff saying there were signs of troubling behavior, according to documents from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), CNN reports.
In any case, Manning was a guest on an episode of the H3 podcast, where she shared her thoughts on what happened to Epstein.
When she was asked by hosts Ethan and Hila Klein what she thought of the circumstances surrounding the death of the disgraced financier based on her own experience as an inmate, she said: "Murder, that's how a prison murder happens. I know. That stuff happens. Some of theses stories are in my book. You wanna get rid of someone in prison? That's how you do it."
Manning continued: "I just gotta' say, time and time again - the most violent people in the prison are the prison guards, every single time, just endless amounts of fear and anxiety of what a correctional guard of any variety was going to do.
"It haunts me to say, I don't associate the prison uniform with violence, but I see the CO uniform and it's different.
"I would say that there's the rule of thirds. There are guards who care, they think they are doing a service and they try to be fair - it's a fast turnover rate. Then there are the guards who look the other way, treat it as a paycheck.
"Then there's the sadistic ones, the ones who play games and lie and cheat and steal, and get away with it. The other third who look the other way, don't do anything."
