This archive report was first published on 14 August 2019.
On August 14, 2019, US Justice Department officials were briefed multiple times a day on the inquiries into Jeffrey Epstein's death, a Justice Department official said.
Two other reviews of Epstein's death were underway, including one by the inspector general and the F.B.I., a Justice Department official said.
On Tuesday, a team of psychologists from the Bureau of Prisons visited the Manhattan jail to review each step of the decision to take Epstein off suicide watch.
On Wednesday, an 'after-action team' led by the Bureau of Prisons' Southeast regional director was scheduled to be at the prison to determine whether employees and officials followed protocols in the days and weeks before Epstein died, the official said.
Epstein's death has drawn outrage from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Doug Collins, who sent a letter to the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons, Hugh Hurwitz, demanding answers about how Epstein could have been unsupervised long enough to take his own life.
The letter, signed by Nadler and Collins, said Epstein's apparent suicide had brought to light 'severe miscarriages' or deficiencies in how inmates are managed at the jail and had 'allowed the deceased to ultimately evade facing justice.'
Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also urged Attorney General William Barr to rip up an agreement federal prosecutors in Florida had reached with Epstein in 2008 that shielded not only him, but any other co-conspirators who may have helped him lure teenage girls into prostitution.
