One of Jeffrey Epstein's guards not a corrections officer

A person familiar with operations at the federal jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself says one of the two people guarding him the night he died wasn't a correctional officer.

The person wasn't authorized to disclose information about the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The person said Epstein hanged himself with a bedsheet, days after being taken off a suicide watch.

Federal prisons facing shortages of fully trained guards have resorted to having other types of support staff fill in for correctional officers, including clerical workers and teachers.

Jail policy called for guards to check Epstein every 30 minutes, but investigators have learned those checks weren't done for several hours in the hours before he was discovered Saturday.

That's according to a second person who was not authorized to discuss the matter and also spoke on condition of anonymity.

The House Judiciary Committee is demanding answers from the Bureau of Prisons about the suicide.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and the top Republican on the panel, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, wrote the bureau's acting director on Monday with several questions about the conditions in the prison before Epstein took his own life. The committee asked Hugh Hurwitz for details on the bureau's suicide prevention program, the circumstances of Epstein's confinement and details about specific employees who were working that night.

Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell Saturday morning. Nadler and Collins wrote that they agree with Attorney General William Barr that there are "serious questions" about Epstein's death.