The Justice Department reportedly took its first steps on Tuesday toward trying to decipher what went wrong at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in the lead up to Jeffrey Epstein's death by apparent suicide.
Lamine N'Diaye, the warden at the federal detention center has reportedly been reassigned to a regional office, and two staffers monitoring Epstein's unit at the time of his death have reportedly been placed on leave. Attorney General William Barr called the facility's handling of Epstein a "failure" and cited "irregularities" at the facility.
Epstein was being held in a special housing unit of the MCC and staff was supposed to check in on him every 30 minutes, but they reportedly did not do so several hours before he was found dead in his cell on Saturday morning, a person familiar with the situation said.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
That said, Serene Gregg, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3148, which represents the staffers at the MCC, told The Washington Post that it is "not atypical" to replace employees on leave "when investigation is initiated," as a means for preserving the integrity of the investigation.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.