In a year full of scandal, the biggest controversy of the year revolves around the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

Not only did the billionaire die of a very suspicious “suicide” while in prison awaiting trial for sex trafficking… he also had high profile associates which included some of the most famous, powerful men on the planet.

The potential fount of inside information — perhaps even criminal implication — on politicians and business titans and royals was forever shut off when Epstein (maybe?) killed himself in August.

Related: Epstein Prison Guards Arrested

But before his death, he did speak to someone — a man named Bill Mersey.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center inmate served as an “inmate companion” to Epstein after his first suicide attempt, something some prisons employ in order to keep an eye on inmates on suicide watch. (It apparently costs only pennies on the hour, as opposed to the prison psychologist who “would stop by once a day for 10 or 15 minutes with each inmate.”

Now Mersey is spilling to DailyMailTV on everything Epstein told him in their time together.

The topic which interested the billionaire most? Sex workers. Mersey recalls:

“I told him that I had made money catering to escort services. He lit up immediately and we talked for two hours on escort services in New York. He had a thousand and one questions, he was fascinated by it. He wanted to learn everything about it and had a genuine curiosity. I had the sense that he knew nothing of it and hadn’t used escorts.

He wanted to know how the business worked: were the girls really cute, did I partake? How much money did the owners make, how much money the girls make? He asked about the girls’ tips, if they had a place to live and security. We talked for a long time about that.

He didn’t ask about underage girls, nothing like that. I had no discussions with him about pedophilia or his predilection for girls under 18. He didn’t brag on sexual exploits at all but he seemed like a really oversexed individual. His interest was somewhat salacious but more academic because he was a teacher by trade.”

So… based on the accusations against Epstein (who had previously pleaded guilty in 2006 to a radically reduced charge of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old), it sounds like he was basically talking shop.

Mersey swears he never heard any details about any of the crimes for which the infamous inmate was accused, but he says there was one day in which he talked about two of his most famous associates.

“He didn’t brag about his lifestyle but Epstein knew everybody that matters, so I did ask him one time, Jeffrey, give me one anecdote that’s emblematic of the essence of Donald Trump.”

The man has a golden toilet, and his charity was shut down by the government for illegal behavior. What else do you need to know??

But there was an anecdote no one had heard before…

“Epstein thought about it and then said, ‘Donald and I are flying in my private jet to Florida and I have a French girl with me. Donald says to me, why don’t we land in Atlantic City so I can show your friend my casino?’

[Epstein] said, ‘I’m not landing in Atlantic City, it’s all white trash down there.’ So the French girl goes, What does white trash mean? I don’t understand.’ And Trump says, ”It’s me without money.'”

Ha! That is surprisingly self aware for Trump!

While the story itself doesn’t exactly make Trump look bad — frankly, it’s the most honest thing we’ve heard him say in four years — the association does.

Like Prince Andrew in his disastrous interview, the President has been doing everything he can to distance himself from the accused sex trafficker ever since the man he picked for Secretary of Labor was revealed to be the US attorney who cut Epstein the infamous sweetheart deal which protected “any potential co-conspirators” from prosecution. (Alexander Acosta has since resigned over the scandal — it has so far slid off Trump’s back.)

However, Trump and Epstein were friends for too long to just erase it from history. There are tons of photos out there, as well as the Celebrity Apprentice star’s gushing quote about his pal in a 2002 Money magazine profile:

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Yuck.

But Trump isn’t the only president who used to fly the friendly skies with Epstein.

According to Mersey, he had a story about his buddy Bill Clinton as well! For those who don’t know, the controversial ex-prez hitched a ride on Epstein’s private jet — dubbed the “Lolita Express” by accusers — several times, all around the world.

Mersey recalls:

“[Epstein] said he was walking down the street in a Chinese city with him and a really beautiful Asian girl walked by. [Clinton] turned to him and said, ‘That woman makes my d**k harder than Chinese arithmetic.'”

Ew.

That is both vaguely racist and unequivocally pervy.

Neither anecdote has anything to do with the crimes for which Epstein was accused. Again, Mersey says he was never told anything about that and purposely didn’t ask.

“I didn’t get in his business like that. It wasn’t my job. I mean specifically, you weren’t supposed to do that. I felt like my role was to entertain, to make life worth living. Not to ask him pointed questions about his crime and depress him.”

Mersey did talk to Epstein about his frame of mind being in prison — and facing a LOT more hard time given the government’s evidence against him.

The confidant says he mostly got from Epstein not depression but fear. Not because his alleged crimes involved underage girls (“chomos — child molesters — hide their crime because that’s the lowest thing in prison, along with being a snitch”) but because he could be extorted:

“I think he was more afraid because he was a rich man. He was afraid for his physical safety, he thought he was going to get his ass kicked.”

He says Epstein asked him if he needed to hire a black inmate for protection.

Hmm. Does that sound like someone who was planning on not being around? Hard to say…

Mersey did talk to Epstein about suicide, though, as that was part of his job. He discussed the attempt which landed him in suicide watch but didn’t get much out of the billionaire:

“I saw he had a couple of abrasions. I didn’t take it all that seriously. I asked him, Jeffrey what happened? He said, ‘I got up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night and that’s the last thing I remember. I blacked out.’ I thought he was full of crap but I’m not going to push it. But that was obviously what his lawyer told him to say.”

Mersey says while “some guys in the suicide unit were really losing it” the man he observed wasn’t like that:

“He didn’t seem mentally unbalanced and had no emotional outbursts. He didn’t strike me as suicidal but sometimes you could see it in his eyes, ‘Oh my God, I’m never getting out of here.’ He would kind of drift off and I would try to bring him back.”

For what it’s worth, Mersey actually doesn’t buy the conspiracy theories; he thinks Epstein did commit suicide.

Why? He spoke to an inmate, who he just calls Brown, who supposedly had the cell next to Epstein’s:

“When he got back from the SHU (special housing unit), Brown came up to me. He said, ‘I had the cell next to Jeffrey Epstein when I was in the SHU and I talked to him that night. I asked him if he got his radio back and we conversed briefly and he said everything was good. And then about an hour later I heard him tearing up sheets.’ Brown said he definitely killed himself, nobody killed him. About six o’clock in the morning, the guards came through. They did not come through during night.”

Interesting. But how does Brown know who was tearing up sheets?

Mersey rejects the idea of foul play, saying:

“There would have to be so many people in on the conspiracy it would be really difficult to orchestrate. When Brown told me what he heard from the cell right next to him, those doors are pretty close to each other. I am 99.999 percent that he committed suicide. I wasn’t there to see it so I can’t be 100 percent but I wouldn’t bet 2 cents against $1 million that somebody did him. He did himself.”

If he truly believes that, then why did he do it?

Mersey speculates:

“I have this theory that the SHU killed him because it can be a maddening place. The SHU can get really noisy, it’s like a zoo. You’re caged in. You can really spiral down emotionally.”

He describes:

“You can’t make phone calls, you can’t buy commissary. You only shower three times a week. The cells at MCC are crawling with roaches, water bugs and families of mice.”

Mersey remembers:

“The last time I saw him, he was eating his dinner sitting on the floor, with his food between his legs. I thought that’s a long way down from a $77 million mansion to eating prison food sitting on a stone floor.”

As gross as that all sounds, there’s still so much fishy business going on.

What do YOU think??

[Image via WENN/Instar/New York State Sex Offender Registry.]

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