Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General

The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice is the department's statutory internal auditor and investigator. It is a separate office from the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviewed the prosecutors' handling of Jeffrey Epstein's 2007 non-prosecution agreement. With the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the inspector general investigated the Federal Bureau of Prisons' custody of Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, where he died on August 10, 2019, and issued Report 23-085 in June 2023 under Inspector General Michael Horowitz. In January 2026 the ranking Democrats of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees asked the office, then led by Acting Inspector General Don R. Berthiaume, to investigate staff misconduct at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, where Ghislaine Maxwell was held.¹²³

Report 23-085

The investigation was conducted jointly with the FBI, which examined whether a crime caused Epstein's death while the inspector general examined the conduct of bureau personnel; the office interviewed 54 witnesses. The report withheld most staff names, identifying employees by role, except the two officers who were criminally charged, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas.¹

It recorded that on July 23, 2019 staff found Epstein "lying on the floor with a piece of orange cloth around his neck," that he first said his cellmate "tried to kill him" and later said he did not remember how he was injured, and that after leaving psychological observation he "asked two different MCC New York staff members if he can be housed with the same cellmate." On July 30 a staff psychologist emailed more than 70 bureau employees that Epstein "needs to be housed with an appropriate cellmate." His cellmate was transferred out on the morning of August 9 and no replacement was assigned.¹

The jail's camera system had been under an upgrade since contracts were awarded in September 2018. Disk failures on July 29 and 30, 2019 left the second of its two recording systems, which covered about half of the cameras including those in the Special Housing Unit, unable to record; staff learned of it on August 8 and had not completed repairs by Epstein's death. One camera still recording covered the common area and the stairs to Epstein's tier, but not his cell door.¹

On the evening of August 9, "contrary to BOP policy but with the permission of a Unit Manager," Epstein placed an unmonitored call, purportedly to his mother, who had died in 2004. The recipient, identified as Individual 1, declined to be interviewed; through a lawyer Individual 1 told the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that the call lasted about 20 minutes and that Individual 1 was in Belarus at the time. A staff member told the office that one of Epstein's attorneys had earlier asked him "how Epstein could get an unmonitored call." Staff did not conduct the required counts and rounds from about 10:40 p.m. until 6:30 a.m., when Noel and Thomas found him. Noel and Thomas were indicted on November 19, 2019 for falsifying records; they entered deferred prosecution agreements on May 25, 2021 and the charges were dismissed on December 13, 2021. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute other employees who the office found had also created false documentation.¹

The report made eight recommendations to the bureau, on cellmate assignments after suicide watch, monitoring of high-risk inmates, telephone authorization, accounting for inmates, cell searches, staffing and cameras, and stated: "Since at least 2015, the OIG has repeatedly found the need for BOP to address staffing shortages." It stated that the office "did not uncover evidence contradicting the FBI's determination regarding the absence of criminality," and that three inmates with a view of Epstein's cell door said no one entered or left it after he was returned to it on August 9.¹

Horowitz's Statement and the Warden's Response

In a recorded message released with the report, Horowitz said that "MCC New York staff failed to ensure Epstein was assigned a cellmate as instructed by MCC New York's Psychology Department following an incident on July 23rd where Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell with a cloth wrapped around his neck," that staff "failed to undertake required measures" including "inmate counts and rounds, and searches of cells," that a search would have found "excess prison blankets, linens, and clothing," and that the camera system was not "fully functional." He said the office "did not uncover evidence contradicting the FBI's determination that there was no criminality in connection with how Epstein died," and that the failures "deprived Epstein's numerous victims of the opportunity to seek justice through the criminal justice system."²

The retired warden of the jail, whose name is redacted in the released copy, answered the April 5, 2023 draft in a memorandum to Horowitz disputing its finding that he "used poor judgement in not selecting a backup cellmate for Jeffrey Epstein while he was housed in the Special Housing Unit." He wrote that the unit's population was "constantly being moved to other units, being transferred, or released," that staff had "vetted several inmates as potential cellmates" and identified "only one," and that "there were no potential backup inmates to be housed with Mr. Epstein during the period he was housed in the SHU."⁴

The unsigned Justice Department and FBI memorandum of July 7, 2025, which stated that the government's review of its Epstein holdings "revealed no incriminating 'client list,'" cited the office's June 2023 conclusions as consistent with the FBI's finding that Epstein "committed suicide in his cell."⁵

FPC Bryan

On January 23, 2026 Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Inspector General Berthiaume, citing "over a dozen whistleblowers" at Federal Prison Camp Bryan who alleged that Maxwell had been permitted "to use a laptop, unsupervised," that the warden "fired those who made protected disclosures to Congress," and that inmates had suffered "widespread sexual abuse and misconduct." They asked the inspector general to "initiate an investigation into the reported staff misconduct."³