Guards assigned to watch Jeffrey Epstein are placed on leave

Two guards who were assigned to watch Jeffrey Epstein when he killed himself in his New York jail cell have been placed on administrative leave and the warden has been temporarily reassigned. 

The Justice Department revealed on Tuesday it was shaking up staffing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in the wake of the billionaire pedophile’s death. 

The two guards were placed on leave and the warden was reassigned to an office post pending the outcome of two investigations. Both the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general are investigating Epstein’s death. 

The Justice Department said the warden of another facility in upstate New York has been named the acting warden at MCC. The Department said it will take additional personnel action as warranted. 

The announcement was made hours after President Donald Trump said he wanted a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death. 

Attorney General William Barr has also expressed outrage that Epstein was able to take his own life Saturday while under the care of the federal Bureau of Prisons while the inmate was facing sex trafficking charges. 

In the days since Epstein’s death, a portrait has begun to emerge of Manhattan’s federal detention center as a chronically understaffed facility that possibly made a series of missteps in handling its most high-profile inmate. 

Sources have said that one of Epstein’s two guards the night he died wasn’t a regular correctional officer and had been brought in due to staffing shortages.  

Epstein was also left alone without a cellmate despite only just coming off suicide watch following an early attempt last month. 

At the MCC, two jail guards are required to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes but that procedure was not followed the night Epstein killed himself, according to sources. 

The sex offender had previously been on suicide watch but that was lifted some time prior to his death. 

Federal prosecutors in New York are pursuing a parallel investigation into whether any associates of Epstein will face charges for assisting him in what authorities say was his rampant sexual abuse of teenage girls.

Barr warned on Monday that any co-conspirator in the sex-crimes case against Epstein ‘should not rest easy’, adding: ‘The victims deserve justice, and they will get it.’

The Justice Department revealed on Tuesday it was shaking up staffing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan (above) in the wake of the billionaire pedophile’s death

The House Judiciary Committee sent a scathing letter on Monday to the acting director of federal prisons, saying that the competency and rigor of the criminal justice system had been marred by Epstein’s death in custody. 

Chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Jerry Nadler, said if the allegations of mistakes made at the prison were true, it would demonstrate ‘severe miscarriages of or deficiencies in inmate protocol and has allowed the deceased to ultimately evade facing justice.’

Nadler and other lawmakers asked for answers ranging from the prison’s suicide-prevention policies to information on the guards on duty and whether video cameras were in use.

It asks that the answers be provided by August 21 and adds that it is imperative that his committee, which oversees the Department of Justice, receives a reply. 

The 66-year-old was arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to federal charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14. 

Epstein was already a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of unlawfully paying a teenage girl for sex. 

Prior to that conviction, he had counted the rich and powerful, including U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton, among his associates.