AP Sources: Epstein Jail Guards Had Been Offered Plea Deal

Federal prosecutors offered a plea deal to two correctional officers responsible for guarding Jeffrey Epstein on the night of his death, but the officers have declined the offer, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.The existence of the plea offer signals the Justice Department is considering criminal charges in connection with the wealthy financier’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York in August. The city’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.

The guards on Epstein’s unit are suspected of failing to check on him every half hour, as required, and of fabricating log entries to show they had. As part of the proposed plea deal, prosecutors wanted the guards to admit they falsified the prison records, according to the people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to publicly discuss the investigation.

Neighborhood backlash collides with America’s tech arms race — but is this the plan to fix it?

One southern state’s rise is making it America’s new ‘economic center of gravity’

WATCH: Dem senators dodge backing Kamala Harris in potential 2028 run: ‘Very messy’

Dem Policy Would Make Ralphie Get a Background Check for His Red Ryder BB Gun

Dems hand GOP fresh midterm weapon by opposing widely used voter ID

JPMorgan Sued After Employee Was Allegedly Asked Keep His ‘Gay Job’ Off the Clock

Illegal Families Given $100k: Report Reveals ‘Shadow Welfare System’ This State Uses to Fund Illegals

‘Family Man’ Stopped A Car Thief in Self-Defense: Now, He’s Charged With 7 Felonies

Fugitive suspect in Georgia mom’s silicone injection murder captured 17 years later after DMV slipup: cops

Trump says polls ‘don’t account for one thing,’ as he pledges to defeat communists ‘once and for all’

South Carolina birthday girls’ trip allegedly turns deadly at the hands of bartender, friend says

Iran could move shadow war in a dangerous direction, experts warn on back of two possible terror attacks

Abdul el Sayed has stabilized his Michigan Senate campaign. Can the Democrat hold the gains?

Ukraine Annihilates 3,000 Enemy Troops by Dropping Killer Robots Behind Russian Lines, Makes World History

GOP AGs Target Wall Street Big 3 for Punishing Companies with Bad Credit for Refusing to Comply with Woke ESG

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan had no comment on the plea offer. Both guards were working overtime because of staffing shortages. They have been placed on administrative leave while the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general investigate the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death. The 66-year-old had been awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls. Epstein was placed on suicide watch after he was found on his cell floor July 23 with bruises on his neck. Multiple people familiar with operations at the jail have said Epstein was then taken off suicide watch about a week before his death, meaning he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.

Epstein’s death exposed mounting evidence that the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center may have bungled its responsibility to keep him alive. Guards often work overtime day after day, and other employees are pressed into service as correctional officers. Falsification of records has been a problem throughout the federal prison system. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, who was named director of the Bureau of Prisons after Epstein’s death, disclosed in a Nov. 4 internal memo that a review of operations across the agency found some staff members failed to perform required rounds and inmate counts but logged that they had done so anyway. “Falsification of information in government systems and documents is also a violation of policy, and may be subject to criminal prosecution as well,” Hawk Sawyer wrote in the memo to top prison officials, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.