John McAfee, the eponymous founder of the PC antivirus software giant, has weighed in on the death of Jeffrey Epstein, saying he doesn’t believe the pedophile committed suicide in his Manhattan lockup.
“The man was 6-foot-1, he hung himself from a bed that was only 5-foot-7 in a manner that managed to break his neck in multiple places similar to someone being physically strangled,” the eccentric 74-year-old told news.com.au.
“His cellmate was taken from his cell six hours before his death, the video cameras were off and the guards in that cell block were sent home early due to cleaning,” he continued.
“You add all that stuff up, and I don’t see how a suicide is possible,” added McAfee, who has been sought by American tax authorities since 2012 and is seeking the Libertarian Party’s nomination for US president in 2020.
The British-born crypto baron announced the launch of his “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” token in a tweet that featured a photo of Hillary Clinton staring at what appears to be a hanging body.
“The $WHACKD token arrives on Friday. Will be immediately listed on http://mcafeedex.com,” he wrote.
McAfee spoke from an undisclosed location inside a “communications Faraday cage with signal jammers and multiple VPNs,” according to the news outlet.
“I can’t tell you where I am. I cannot do that. We carry no telephones with us anymore, we carry no electronics,” the notoriously paranoid tech guru said.
In July, some people became convinced that McAfee was behind a mysterious YouTube account posting drone footage of Epstein’s private Caribbean island.
Asked to comment, McAfee said, “No, I can’t talk about that at all.”
But he added: “Keep in mind Jeffrey Epstein had surveillance gear on that island. It would not be beyond belief to think that he might have kept recordings of whatever activities were happening on the island and people found out about it.
“It’s not something that politicians and people in power would like to have known — so it could be any one of hundreds of people or all of them acting together,” he said.
McAfee acknowledged that he has “no chance of being president” and he “wouldn’t want the job if you paid me” — but “by doing so I get access to the national stage to get my message out.”
He said the biggest threat to freedom is surveillance.
“Our covert agencies, the CIA, NSA, FBI, the way things used to run is you had a suspect, went to court, got a subpoena to tap their phone or read their emails,” he told news.com.au.
“It’s now reached a point where almost everybody is surveilled just because all the data helps the enforcement agencies to pick up bad guys — but at what cost? It’s costing us our privacy, and without privacy you can’t have (freedom). This is the number one problem in America, and from what I’ve seen of the rest of the world, this is becoming the number one problem everywhere.”
McAfee doesn’t anticipate returning to the US anytime soon.
“Barring a presidential pardon, I think the political environment in America is going to have to change,” he said.
“I think that more and more people are becoming upset at income taxes that are unconstitutional. That’s what I’m charged with, income tax fraud. As a libertarian we believe income taxes are illegal, and I just don’t pay them,” he said.
Asked for his assessment of President Trump, McAfee said he doesn’t believe “who sits in the president’s office makes any difference at all.”
“When a president (comes in), the covert agencies, the CIA, NSA, Secret Service, Army intelligence, sit the president down and explain what the world is,” he said.
“You think they tell the president everything? No, they see the president as somebody who’s insignificant. He’ll sit there for four years, and they need to keep him quiet and entertained and give him something to do.
“America is not ruled by presidents, America’s ruled by our covert agencies. This is an absolute fact,” he said.
In July, McAfee said on Twitter that he was released by authorities in the Dominican Republic, where he had been detained for several days along with his wife and four other people for entering the Caribbean nation with a cache of weapons on his yacht.
In January 2012, he announced that he had fled the US and was “living in exile” on a boat because of felony charges handed down by the Internal Revenue Service.
At the peak of his wealth, McAfee’s net worth topped $100 million — but he reportedly lost the bulk of his fortune during the global financial crisis in 2009.
He then liquidated his assets and moved to Belize, where he surrounded himself with a harem of young women — many of whom moved in with him at his heavily fortified beachfront compound on Ambergris Caye.
In 2012, Belize police said McAfee was a “person of interest” in the murder of a neighbor. He told the news outlet Wired in November of that year that he was forced into hiding because local authorities were trying to kill him.
He was arrested later in Guatemala, where he unsuccessfully applied for asylum before eventually being deported to the US.
McAfee is billed as a headline speaker on privacy, freedom and his new decentralized currency exchange, McAfeeDex, at StartCon in Sydney, Australia, later this month.
In true form, he’ll be appearing via videolink.