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.

Longest-serving US prisoner dies at 101 after escaping death penalty 8 times

Charter plane crashes near remote radar site in western Alaska, killing all 8 aboard

Video: Teenage Girl Charged with Assault After Attacking Middle School Football Player During Game

Jury awards teens $550K after Oregon amusement park ride left them hanging upside down: report

Fake Hate: School Board Member Created Story About HS Football Coach – Took Years and $350k in Legal Fees for Truth to Surface

Surrogate says baby ‘ripped away’ 60 seconds after birth as custody fight erupts after abortion refusal

Watch: Scott Jennings Goes Nuclear on Democrats ‘Punching Down’ on Top Trump Aide

Vice President JD Vance blasts Mamdani, El-Sayed, AOC and Ossoff in rapid-fire TikTok roast

Lindsay Clancy Blamed ‘A Male Voice’ for Ordering Her to Kill Her Children: Court Testimony

Newspaper Columnist Quits After Editors Kill Story on a Teen Sophie Cunningham Fan Who Thanked Her for ‘Speaking Up for Girls’

Carville unloads on DSA socialists: ‘Don’t use our god—- name’

Bodycam video shows Oklahoma secretary of state’s arrest outside McDonald’s on public intoxication allegation

Obama strategist turns on rising Dem star over viral Trump attack: ‘Gratuitous and unnecessary’

Republicans Score Crucial Court Win on Redistricting Just Before Midterms

El-Sayed booked for major Islamic convention alongside clerics with radical pasts

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.