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.

Trump admin invokes 30-year dormant terror court as it seeks to deport Afghan woman tied to Election Day plot

Army conducts first overseas test of ‘Hammer of the Gods’ weapon-disrupting system

Grandmother’s missed pickup leads to grim discovery in church parking lot

Clinton, Obama-era Democratic heavyweights Penn and Emanuel rip NYC’s Mamdani over taxes, Israel, blast DSA

Revealed: The DNC Lost Almost $30k to Email Scammer – No Word Yet if the Employee Was DEI or the Scammer Was a Deposed Nigerian Prince

Breaking: US Launches Airstrikes in Iran, Saudi Arabia Joins in as Iran Is Pushed to ‘Tipping Point’

DOJ suffers setback in New Jersey voter roll lawsuit despite illegal registrants scandal

Watch: Sen. Josh Hawley Illustrates the Absurdity of Fauci’s Hearing Stunt with 3 Questions

Trump AG pick Blanche stalled as key Republicans refuse to budge

Trump Going to SCOTUS to Have Punitive $83 Million E. Jean Carroll Decision Reversed

Perverse History Surfaces in Murder-Suicide Deaths of Seemingly Storybook Family of 8 Who Burned in Own Home

Ted Cruz demands Fauci face jail time, labels him America’s ‘most damaging bureaucrat’

Watch: Bodycam Footage of Tony Romo’s Arrest and Sobriety Test Raises Questions

El-Sayed in the hot seat for another foreign rental property, nearly $300K in additional income

Trump taps veterans to fix illegal alien trucking problem plaguing US roadways

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.