FBI likely probing ‘criminal enterprise’ in Jeffrey Epstein jailhouse suicide, says top prison official

On the same day that two corrections officers were charged in connection to Jeffrey Epstein’s August suicide, the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons appeared to acknowledge that the FBI may be probing possible criminality in relation to his jailhouse death, which has been widely questioned despite the New York City Chief Medical Examiner’s conclusion that Epstein took his own life in his cell at the Manhattan Correctional Center.

As the New York Post reports, Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the federal Bureau of Prisons on Tuesday. Though Dr. Hawk Sawyer said she was unable to comment on the specifics of Epstein’s case, she did appear to acknowledge that the FBI is treating his death as a criminal matter when questioned by committee chair Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

“With a case this high-profile, there’s got to be major malfunction in the system or a criminal enterprise afoot to allow this to happen,” Senator Graham said, according to the report .“So are you looking at both? Is the FBI looking at both?”

“If the FBI is involved, then they are looking at criminal enterprise, yes,” Dr. Hawk Sawyer said.

The Miami Herald reports that Texas Senator Ted Cruz said at the oversight hearing that Epstein’s death was either a result of “gross negligence and total failure of BOP [The Bureau of Prisons] to do its job,” or “something far worse … that it was not suicide but rather a homicide carried out by person or persons who wanted Epstein silenced.”

Senator Cruz then reportedly asked Dr. Hawk Sawyer is she had any indication that Epstein died as a result of a homicide.

“There’s no indication, from anything I know, that it as anything other than a suicide,” she said.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, two corrections officers who were tasked with guarding Epstein’s jail cell during the time he reportedly hung himself with a bed sheet have been charged with making false records and conspiring to defraud the United States. According to an indictment obtained by the New York Times, the two guards are accused of falsifying records claiming that they monitored prisoners when they did not.

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