NEW YORK, NY. (THECOUNT) — Instead of making their required 30 minute rounds, both Jeffrey Epstein‘s prison guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, sat at their desks and shopped online for high end items including motorcycles and furniture, according to an indictment. It’s unclear how much money the pair spent if any during the online shopping excursion.
Noel and Thomas sat a mere 15 feet from Epstein’s jail cell and shopped online for items some may argue was above the workers’ pay grade.
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The guards also walked around the unit’s common area and during one two-hour period, the indictment says, both appeared to have fallen asleep.
A lawyer for Thomas, Montell Figgins, said both guards were being “scapegoated.”
“We feel this is a rush to judgment by the U.S. attorney’s office,” he said. “They’re going after the low man on the totem pole here.”
Noel’s lawyer, Jason Foy, said he hoped to “reach a reasonable agreement” with the government that could avoid a trial.
Both correctional officers pleaded not guilty Tuesday and were released on $100,000 bond. The defendants, hiding their faces with clothing, left the courthouse in separate cars waiting for them in the shadow of the jail where they had worked and Epstein died, reports LATimes.
According to the LA Times, Thomas said, “We messed up.” And then added: “I messed up. She’s not to blame; we didn’t do any rounds.”
Prosecutors had wanted the guards to admit they falsified the prison records as part of a plea offer that they rejected, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to publicly discuss the investigation.
While Epstein’s in-custody death was a major embarrassment for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it is the string of ‘mishaps’ and indiscretions leading up to the billionaire’s untimely death that is now getting the attention of conspiracy theorists.
As one blue checkmark Twitter users said of the guards activities:
“Jeffrey Epstein guards were shopping online for motorcycles cars and furniture?? Kinda like they were about to come into some $$??”
Another internet user put it this way:
“guards accused of sleeping and browsing the internet — shopping for furniture and motorcycles — instead of watching Epstein – isn’t the simplest answer Epstein paid them off to look the other way so he could punch his ticket?”
Some on social media asserted Epstein could have simply relayed bank account information to the guards who sat just a few yards away.
Eric Oliver, a University of Chicago professor who studies conspiracy theories, said no amount of evidence presented by government authorities is likely to change some people’s minds:
“The idea that somehow or another they were able to sneak into his jail cell and murder him speaks to both that power — that they’re somehow or another above the law,” Oliver said. “And the nefariousness of their intentions, that they’d be willing to murder some guy who could potentially expose the wealthy,” reported APNews.
Atty. Gen. William Barr previously admitted that investigators found “serious irregularities” at the jail stopping short of admitting any conspiracy.
The indictment said Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell when the guards went to deliver breakfast. Noel confessed to a supervisor that they hadn’t done either their 3 a.m. or 5 a.m. rounds, according to the indictment.
Marc Fernich, a lawyer for Epstein, said:
“It would be a shame if minor scapegoats — classic low-hanging fruit, the softest targets — were made to take the fall for this tragedy on what amounts to a cover-up theory. Unless it prompts genuine self-reflection from all major participants and stakeholders in our criminal justice system and those who cover it, Mr. Epstein’s death in federal custody — senseless and sad as it is — will have been entirely for naught.”
The phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” has taken on a life of its own, showing up on a screen at San Diego’s airport, on a California brewery’s beer cans and as the name of a new Michigan brew.
This month, a former Navy SEAL appearing on Fox News blurted, “Epstein didn’t kill himself,” during an unrelated interview.
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