The Justice Department on Tuesday announced that two guards who were assigned to watch millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, 66, at the time he committed suicide in a Manhattan jail, were placed on administrative leave, while the warden has been reassigned “temporarily.”
Epstein was facing charges of sex trafficking of minors.
According to the DOJ statement, Lamine N’Diaye, the warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been temporarily reassigned to the Bureau of Prisons’ regional office, pending two investigations about the Epstein suicide: one conducted by the FBI, the other by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Attorney General William Barr said, “I was appalled, and indeed the whole department was, and frankly angry to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately secure this prisoner.”
Eric Young, president of the union council that represents prison guards, told News1 that reassignments are routinely done following controversial events, in order to “protect the integrity of investigations until any formal action, if any, is warranted.”
Epstein was taken off suicide watch in late July, but had to be checked every 30 minutes – which no one had done before he was found dead in his cell Saturday morning, after hanging himself.
The cellmate which was supposed to be placed in Epstein’s cell to keep him from killing himself was not there at the time of the suicide.
According to the Associated Press, quoting a person familiar with the investigation, the guards are suspected of falsifying log entries, showing they had been checking on Epstein as warranted. But the CCTV video of Epstein’s cell reportedly shows that the guards did not make some of the checks they marked in the log.