Jeffrey Epstein report: ‘Significant misconduct’ by prison officials led to Epstein’s suicide
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A scathing report from the Justice Department (DOJ) watchdog has detailed a catalogue of errors by Bureau of Prisons officers leading up to the suicide of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General Michael Horowitz found negligence, misconduct and poor job performance by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and workers at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center enabled Epstein to take his own life in August 2019.
These included failing to check on the disgraced financier despite him being on suicide watch, a violation of Bureau of Prison (BOP) policy which requires staff to check on all inmates in solitary confinement at least twice an hour.
Staff at the Manhattan jail also failed to assign Epstein a cellmate and left him with access to additional bed linen which he used to kill himself, the report finds.
Mr Horowitz also cited problems with surveillance cameras as a factor in Epstein’s 2019 death at the age of 66 while awaiting trial for underage sex trafficking.
The DOJ report concluded that while there was extensive failures, no-one else was involved in his death, confirming a previous ruling of suicide by a medical examiner.
Epstein’s long shadow forces a reckoning between JPMorgan and the US Virgin Islands
The Department of Justice has confirmed Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide resulting from “significant misconduct” at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
Nearly four years on, his decades-long underage sex trafficking scheme continues to be the subject of litigation among the powerful people who were sucked into his orbit.
A sprawling lawsuit taken by the US Virgin Islands against JPMorgan Chase is due to go to trial in October.
The USVI accused the Wall St bank of having “pulled the levers” through which Epstein paid his network of enablers.
The lawsuit claims that JPMorgan concealed wire and cash transactions that were part of a “criminal enterprise” whose currency was vulnerable and desperate women and girls, groomed and recruited over decades by Epstein and his chief lieutenant Ghislaine Maxwell.
JPMorgan have tried to shift blame for Epstein’s crimes onto high ranking USVI officials. Their lawyers have claimed in court that the USVI shielded him from accountability while “reaping the benefits of his wealth”.
Epstein’s long shadow forces a final reckoning for JPMorgan and the US Virgin Islands
A sprawling lawsuit that pits the US Virgin Islands against JPMorgan Chase has entangled some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals, Bevan Hurley writes
Epstein ‘blackmailed’ Bill Gates with threat to expose alleged affair
Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed Bill Gates and threatened to expose his alleged affair with a Russian bridge player, according to a recent report.
The late paedophile threatened to expose the Microsoft co-founder’s supposed affair with Mila Antonova if Mr Gates didn’t reimburse him for tuition costs that Epstein had initially covered for the woman to attend a software coding school, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Epstein blackmailed Mr Gates in the form of an email in 2017, the report claims, after he failed to convince the world’s fourth richest man to join a multibillion-dollar charity fund that he attempted to set up with JPMorgan Chase.
The bombshell report adds weight to longstanding speculation that Epstein may have been extorting his powerful network of friends.
Read on for the full story.
Jeffrey Epstein ‘blackmailed’ Bill Gates with threat to expose alleged affair
‘Mr Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes,’ says Gates Foundation spokesperson
Guards walked on ‘eggshells’ around Epstein, inmates say
Corrections officers walked on “eggshells” around Jeffrey Epstein, a damning Inspector General’s report into his suicide found.
Michael Horowitz’s report found irregularities in guards’ treatment of the disgraced financier, who died by suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019.
On the night before he died, Epstein was allowed to place an unrecorded call after asking to call his mother, who was deceased at the time.
He was also allowed to have hours-long meetings with his attorneys and excess bedding, which he later used to hang himself, the report found.
Despite Epstein’s special treatment, the report found no evidence that anyone had entered Epstein’s cell on the night he died.
Four prison staff identified as committing potential crimes in Epstein suicide
Corrections staff at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center were found to have of committed “numerous and serious” instances of misconduct by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General.
Four Bureau of Prison employees were identified as potential having committed criminal offences by Michael Horowitz.
Two of those, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, struck a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
Investigators found they had altered records to make it look like they had performed checks on Jeffrey Epstein.
Charges against both men were dropped last year after they entered into a deferred prosecution agreement.
The report found two supervisors, identified only by their job titles, knowingly and willfully falsified records to make it appear as if they completed mandatory inspections of inmate locations on 9 and 10 August.
“A combination of negligence, misconduct, and outright job performance failures…all contributed to an environment in which arguable one of the most notorious inmates in BOP’s custody was provided with the opportunity to take his own life,” Mr Horowitz concluded.
‘Breathe Epstein, breathe’
New details about Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide have been revealed in a scathing Department of Justice Inspector General report into his death.
The report detailed the moments after two Bureau of Prisons guards carried out an inspection of Epstein’s cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center at about 6.30am on 10 August 2019.
Michael Thomas, who was later criminally charged for falsifying records, would later say he got no response when he knocked on Epstein’s cell. After unlocking the door, he saw Epstein was hanging from a bed.
“Breathe Epstein, breathe,” Mr Thomas said, according to the report.
“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” he added.
Another guard, Tova Noel, told investigators she saw Mr Thomas lift Epstein from under his arms and lay him down on the ground to perform CPR.
She said she hit her body alarm within seconds.
“Noel said that when she saw Epstein, he looked blue and did not have a shirt on,” the report states.
Mr Thomas then performed chest compressions, and did not check for a pulse, she would tell investigators.
A supervisor who responded to the mayday call arrived soon afterwards, and asked what had happened.
Thomas reportedly replied: “Oh, it’s not her fault, we f***ed up.”
The officers’ cell was about 15 feet from Epstein’s cell, and Ms Noel assured supervisors that no-one could have entered without her knowledge.
She told investigators she had worked five days of overtime leading up to the day Epstein died.
The report found that Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell with an orange noose he fashioned from “a sheet or a shirt”.
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