The FBI is investigating whether a criminal enterprise" played a role in the controversial jailhouse death of well-connected sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, the head of the federal prison system told a Senate committee Tuesday. But Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Hawk Sawyer also testified that there is "no indication, from anything I know," that the wealthy investor's demise on Aug. 10 "was anything other than a suicide." At the time Epstein died, the former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton was awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. Sawyer's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee came on the same day that two guards from a Manhattan jail operated by the BOP were criminally charged with falsifying official records to cover up the fact that they never conducted mandated safety checks on Epstein and other inmates in the hours before he was found unresponsive with a noose around his neck. The New York City medical examiner's office has ruled Epstein's death was a suicide by hanging. But Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother, has said that the injuries found on Epstein's neck were more consistent with those found in homicides. During Tuesday's hearing, one senator underscored to the prisons boss how skeptical many people are about the official ruling that Epstein killed himself. "Christmas ornaments, drywall and [Jeffrey] Epstein. Name three things that don't hang themselves," said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
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