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.

Rogers warns Michigan voters against El-Sayed’s ‘extreme’ agenda ahead of election

Watch: Trump Calls Slotkin ‘Lowlife’ for Plan to Terrorize, Deter Future Conservatives With the Threat of Legal Punishment

Watch: Dem Sen So Radically Ignorant on Iran That CNN Has to Educate Him – So Bad, CNN Even Takes Trump’s Side

JD Vance declines to endorse Netanyahu despite Trump’s strong backing

Judge walks back ‘untenable’ order against Trump DOJ after tense DC golf course hearing

‘Changes the balance of leverage’: Zelensky tries to hold on as Trump pressures him to concede

Mahmoud Khalil asks Supreme Court to hear deportation case

LISTEN: Kansas soccer field dispatch call captures mass-casualty response after driver kills boy, man

Netflix Bloodbath Continues – Company Fires Film Chief

Report: Posts from Talarico’s Adoptive Dad Unearthed – Show ‘Best Man’ Dem Knows Joked About Christ and Degenerate Different Way to Kill Him

Kansas man mapped rooftops near Trump speech site, threatened to shoot president: DOJ

Media Learns Would-Be Shooter Is Trans, Immediately Starts Using Biological Pronouns to Hide Trans ID, Blaming Men Instead

Repeat offender accused of shooting National Guard member has lengthy history with the law, records show

Former OJ Simpson attorney, longtime friend both support possibility of accomplice in 1994 murders

Trump renews push to rename New Mexico ‘New America,’ touts higher home values and incomes

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.