‘They Are Shredding Everything’: Prison Officer Alerts FBI After Massive Bags of Documents Shredded at Epstein’s Jail Days After His Death

 

A new investigative report has exposed how a corrections officer told the FBI that massive bags of documents were being shredded at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in the days after Jeffrey Epstein’s death there on August 10, 2019.

The Miami Herald published the bombshell story on Friday, after analyzing thousands of pages from the Epstein files.

An inmate identified as Steven Lopez was directed to haul multiple bags of shredded material, described as “bales,” to a dumpster at the jail’s rear gate on August 15 and again on August 16.

Lopez told a veteran corrections officer, Michael Kearins, “They are shredding everything back there,” according to the report.

Kearins, who said he had “never seen this amount of bags of shredded documents coming out to be put in the dumpster,” contacted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center on August 16 at 6:28 p.m. to report the unusual shredding.

In a follow-up memo dated August 19, he wrote that the shredding appeared inappropriate and urged an investigation: “I believe that this conduct may be inappropriate for an investigative team to be shredding paperwork related to the investigation, and you may want to investigate why BOP employees are destroying records.”

The Herald reports:

An inmate at the jail was ordered to take the bags of shredded material to MCC’s rear gate and throw them in a dumpster on Thursday, Aug. 15, and again on Friday, Aug. 16, days after Epstein’s Aug. 10 death, records show. The sheer volume of material seemed unusual, the inmate noted.

“They are shredding everything,” the inmate told one of the guards, adding that he was asked to give the officials, whom he did not recognize, a hand with the shredding.

“Make sure you get that box too,” one of the men allegedly told him.

The inmate wasn’t the only one who found it out of the ordinary. A corrections officer at the detention facility called the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center that same night, a Friday, at 6:28 p.m. to report that he had “never seen this amount of bags of shredded documents coming out to be put in the dumpster at the rear gate of MCC.”

A back gate corrections officer was also troubled by what he witnessed as the inmate brought down “bales” of shredded paper, according to a memo he wrote to investigators three days later, on Monday, Aug. 19.

“I believe that this conduct may be inappropriate for [an] investigative team to be shredding paperwork related to the investigation and you may want to investigate why BOP employees are destroying records,” the correctional officer wrote on Aug. 19 around 11 a.m.

“Can we take a look at the Dumpster ASAP to see if the paper is still there? Possible they didn’t dump it yet,” replied one of the federal agents whose name is redacted in the memo.

But it was already too late. The trash was picked up that very morning.

The timing coincided with federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York requesting institutional count slips for dates prior to Epstein’s death.

Those records were later reported missing, the Herald noted.

The shredding occurred while an “After Action Review” team from the Federal Bureau of Prisons was at the facility examining the circumstances of the death.

Two guards on duty the night Epstein died, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were later indicted on charges of falsifying counts and failing to perform required checks. Those charges were dropped in a deferred prosecution agreement in December 2021.

The new reporting also notes that the U.S. Attorney’s Office opened multiple probes into aspects of the case, including potential obstruction.

An Office of Inspector General investigation interviewed Lopez and others, but the matter was closed without further apparent action. An anonymous letter later sent to a federal judge suggested possible interference with the reporting of the destruction of records.

Epstein, who was facing sex-trafficking charges, was found unresponsive in his cell and his death was officially ruled a suicide by hanging by New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, hired by Epstein’s brother, has long contended the injuries were more consistent with homicide.