On November 19, 2019, U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and John Kennedy confronted Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Sawyer with intense scrutiny over the mysterious circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Their sharp questioning reflected growing public outrage as they demanded full accountability, transparency, and answers. The senators emphasized that the American people deserve clarity about how such a high-profile inmate could die under federal supervision, reigniting debates and controversy nationwide.
00:03However, the average time on Suicide Watch is only about 24 hours
00:07because it is such a stark and actually depressing situation.
00:10Christmas ornaments, drywall, and Jerry Epstein.
00:14Name three things that don't hang themselves.
00:17That's what the American people think.
00:19That's what the American people think.
00:21Then how widespread is the problem of sleeping on the job?
00:24There are lots of people in the public who think this seems a very convenient excuse.
00:28And so, tell us, is it a systemic problem?
00:30Do we have a lot of people who sleep on the job
00:32when they're supposed to be guarding federal inmates?
00:34We have a few, sir, and we have been monitoring the cameras
00:37that are existing in every one of our institutions
00:40to determine how well and how effectively our inmates are,
00:42I mean our staff members, are doing their rounds.
00:44As I indicated in my opening statement, I wanted to talk about the death of Mr. Epstein.
00:49Do you concur with the opinion that it was a suicide?
00:55That was the finding of the coroner, sir.
00:58Okay. Do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise?
01:00I do not.
01:01How could this have happened?
01:03Unfortunately, sir, the death and the whole situation
01:07is still under the investigation of the FBI and the Inspector General's Office,
01:11and I'm really not at liberty to discuss specifics of this case.
01:15I can discuss issues around institutional operations,
01:19but I can't specifically talk about that particular issue.
01:22Okay.
01:23With a case this high-profile,
01:27there's got to be either a major malfunction of the system
01:30or a criminal enterprise at foot to allow this to happen.
01:34So are you looking at both?
01:36Is the FBI looking at both?
01:38If the FBI is involved, then they are looking at criminal enterprise, yes.
01:41Do we have people in custody today of this high-profile nature?
01:46Have we done anything to adjust since Mr. Epstein's death?
01:50Sir, we take every inmate's life very seriously in the Bureau of Prisons.
01:54A high-profile inmate is no more important or significant in terms of our operations
01:59than just the average inmate that comes our way.
02:01What do I mean high-profile?
02:02Somebody's on a suicide watch.
02:04I would like to explain our suicide watch system, if I may.
02:07I can't talk specifically about Epstein,
02:09but we have different tiers of response if we identify an inmate
02:12who appears to have suicidal thinking.
02:15And I came into the Bureau as a psychologist.
02:17I worked with lots of suicidal inmates.
02:19I was a warden at our psychiatric facility in Butner,
02:21and I know how difficult it is to always be able to predict
02:23who is suicidal and who is not.
02:25But once an inmate is identified as potentially suicidal,
02:27we have a suicide watch operation that we can place them in.
02:30It's a very stark, very difficult setting
02:33where everything is stripped from the room except a mattress.
02:35They get a coarse gown like to wear that cannot be twisted in any way
02:39that they could hang themselves from it.
02:41They have one mattress and one blanket, and they are watched constantly.
02:45There's nothing else in that room.
02:46Is Mr. Epstein on suicide watch?
02:47Yes, he watched.
02:48However, the average time on suicide watch is only about 24 hours
02:52because it is such a stark and actually depressing situation.
02:56We then can move them to another tier of observation,
02:58which is called psychological observation.
03:00Did that happen in this case?
03:02I can't speak specifically, but I am sharing this with you
03:05so that you understand our procedure, sir.
03:07They then can move to another tier, which is psychological observation,
03:12where they get their clothes back.
03:13They are in a more normalized setting.
03:15They are watched and scrutinized every moment of the day.
03:18But that is a much more normal environment.
03:20Do they have roommates?
03:21I'm sorry, sir?
03:22Do they have roommates?
03:23No, they do not when they are on psychological observation
03:26because they are being watched continuously.
03:27Did Mr. Epstein have a roommate when he allegedly committed suicide?
03:30No, he did not.
03:31Okay.
03:32Go ahead.
03:33They move into psychological observation.
03:37Psychologists see them routinely, interview them repeatedly,
03:40and once it's determined that the threat of suicide seems to have passed,
03:46then that inmate can be returned back to open population.
03:49Well, clearly it didn't work here, so we await the report
03:54because all the victims of Mr. Epstein have to have their heart ripped out.
03:59I still never see justice.
04:01Dr. Sawyer, can you think of any other incidents in the history of the BOP
04:07that have caused as much crisis for public trust for your institution as Epstein's death?
04:12I can only speak since 1976 when I joined the Bureau.
04:16I don't know prior to that, but I would say it's probably gotten the most public attention.
04:21There are lots of taxpayers and citizens who have never thought about the BOP,
04:24and you have lots of good patriotic, hardworking folks there.
04:27I get that.
04:28But in terms of a crisis of public trust in general, but also in terms of your workforce,
04:33this death happened in the middle of August, early August.
04:36It's Thanksgiving, and you're here to testify today,
04:39and you say you're not allowed to speak about this incident.
04:41I think that's crazy.
04:42Can you distinguish among types of investigations at least for us?
04:46Because I'm aware of at least three Epstein investigations.
04:48You get a whole bunch of women who were raped by this guy.
04:51This is a sex trafficking ring in the United States.
04:54This guy had evidence, he's got co-conspirators,
04:57and there are victims out there who want to know where the evidence has gone.
05:01Can you tell us a little bit more about the different investigations?
05:04I understand there's at least one that you're directed by Maine Justice not to speak about,
05:08but there are at least three investigations.
05:10Can you unpack them, please?
05:12There are two investigations that are ongoing.
05:14One is the FBI's investigation, and the other is the Inspector General's investigation.
05:18Both inside BOP, but there's a third one outside,
05:20which is why Epstein was in your institution to begin with.
05:23Yeah, and that, sir, is completely out of my...
05:25I get that.
05:26There's a lot here where DOJ has failed.
05:29There's a lot here that BOP has failed.
05:30Let's just be clear, so we have a level set for everybody in this room.
05:33You're in your job because of this crisis, right?
05:36You come here today, and you say you can't testify about it,
05:39but the reason you're director now is because the last guy got fired, right?
05:42Senator, I can't tell you what I don't know.
05:44I have received no information from the FBI investigation yet,
05:48nor no information from the Inspector General.
05:50Once those entities go into one of our facilities,
05:52we are forbidden from talking to anybody in the institution.
05:56We can send in a team and look at wherever there might have been a security flaw or something,
06:00but we are not allowed to talk to anybody in our institutions about anything that happened over the Epstein...
06:05With all due respect, you still have an obligation to speak to the girls who were raped by this guy today.
06:11You may not have to speak about every particular of the guards that were arrested last night,
06:16but the fact that there is an ongoing attempt by the United States government to find out if there's still any evidence about the co-conspirators,
06:23you do have an obligation to speak to those girls who were raped today.
06:27You may not speak about the specifics of the charges against those two guards this morning who were taken into custody,
06:34but more broadly, you should be able to unpack, have we changed any processes about how cases like this are handled?
06:41It's been more than 90 days, and you said, I think your quote was,
06:44we treat every inmate the same.
06:46We believe in America that every individual has equal dignity,
06:49but not every inmate has equal value for future criminal investigations.
06:54Jeffrey Epstein was still to testify in a case.
06:57Somebody who's already been convicted who may be on suicide watch,
07:01there are lots of good reasons to not want that guy to be able to kill himself.
07:04This is different, because it isn't just about the individual inmate who might kill themselves,
07:09it's about the fact that that bastard wasn't able to testify against his other co-conspirators.
07:14So it is wrong, as a management matter, for you to say we treat everybody the same.
07:19We should be treating people who are yet to testify against other felons, against other rapists.
07:25They have a lot more priority for your institution, don't they?
07:28Senator, pretty much all of our inmates that are in any of our jail facilities are pretrial.
07:33They're still yet to testify, to be involved, to share information on other cases.
07:37I don't know what evidence you're asking of me.
07:39If you're saying was there any evidence in his room, in his possession at the time,
07:43that was all confiscated by the FBI.
07:45In his brain, and in the cameras, and in the tapes, that the American public well understands
07:49appear to not be urgent enough for the Department of Justice.
07:52No, it's very urgent for the Department of Justice, and it's all been confiscated by the FBI,
07:56and it's all part of their investigation.
07:58That's why none of that is shared with the director of the Bureau of Prisons,
08:01or anyone in the Bureau, until the investigations are completed.
08:05Once those are completed, I'd be very happy to come up here and talk with any one of you that want to hear
08:09everything about we glean from those investigations.
08:12But until I have that information, there's nothing I can tell you.
08:15If I don't have the information, I cannot share anything with you.
08:18Then how widespread is the problem of sleeping on the job?
08:21There are lots of people in the public who think this seems a very convenient excuse.
08:25And so tell us, is it a systemic problem?
08:28Do we have a lot of people who sleep on the job when they're supposed to be guarding federal inmates?
08:32We have a few, sir, and we have been monitoring the cameras that are existing in every one of our institutions
08:38to determine how well and how effectively our staff members are doing their rounds and counts in the institutions.
08:44We have found a couple of other instances, and we have immediately referred those to the Inspector General's Office.
08:49And I'm encouraging that if people just chose not to do their job, we're hoping the U.S. Attorney's Office will pick up those cases
08:56and prosecute them for us because we don't want those people in the Bureau of Prisons.
09:00They are dangerous to everybody, the inmates and the staff.
09:03And so we are zealously going about trying to determine which of our employees are good employees and who do their job,
09:10which is the vast majority of the prison staff, but we do have some I know out there who obviously choose not to follow policy,
09:18choose not to do their job, and we want them gone.
09:21I do not want them in our institutions, and I am exploring those very, very carefully to identify them and get them out of our system.
09:27Now, if it's a training problem and they didn't know what they were supposed to do, that's our problem.
09:31That's management's problem. We have to do a better job training our staff.
09:34But if someone is well-trained, well-experienced, and chooses not to do their job, we want them gone.
09:40I assure you of that.
09:42I'm at time, so I'll just give you a preview of something I'm going to ask you for the record after the event.
09:46You made a really important statement about drone drops of different kinds of contraband into your institutions.
09:52That's obviously a new and hard problem.
09:54That's a problem against which we have to play defense, but there's also new opportunities for offense.
09:58And so what your long-term strategy is inside the institution about cameras is something that I think a lot of us would like to hear more,
10:04and I'll send you a letter with some questions.
10:06Okay, very good. Thank you.
10:07I think Epstein's hallway should have still been monitored by cameras even if his guards were asleep,
10:12and we don't have information about whether or not there were adequate cameras there.
10:15And so I think a lot of us would like to understand where technology dollars are going.
10:18Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Schwerer.
10:19Thank you, Senator.
10:20Senator Blumenthal is next, but just to follow up on this, will there be an IG report regarding what happened?
10:25There should be. Usually after the Inspector General's Office investigates, they do come out with a report.
10:30If people are pending criminal charges, we're not going to interfere in their cases.
10:33But if there's an IG report, I promise you we'll get fully briefed by the committee here.
10:38How can I put this? Christmas ornaments, drywall, and Jerry Epstein. Name three things that don't hang themselves.
10:53That's what the American people think. That's what the American people think. And they deserve some answers.
11:02And I know that you're not in charge of these investigations.
11:07Yes, sir.
11:08But you talk to the people who are. And I need you to take a very respectful message today.
11:21Tell the American people what happened. And don't rush it so that they don't do a thorough investigation.
11:29But you and I both know they can make this a top priority and get it done more quickly than they normally would.
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