Overview
- Miami Herald reporting highlights an FBI crisis intake form documenting a corrections officer’s allegation that a Bureau of Prisons “After-Actions” team shredded large volumes of paperwork at MCC shortly after Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death.
- On August 16, 2019, officer Michael Kearins told the FBI Threat Operations Center it was suspicious that an investigative team was shredding materials while federal agents and other officials were in the building.
- The officer said at least one inmate was enlisted to haul bags of shredded documents to a dumpster and warned they needed to be retrieved before a scheduled Monday morning pickup, yet it appears the dumpster was not checked in time.
- In a related email, an assistant federal prosecutor wrote that investigators were examining potential obstruction and reported that institutional count slips from before August 10, 2019 were apparently missing.
- The Office of Inspector General conducted brief interviews with the inmate and Kearins, the inmate denied knowing about shredding, and the inquiry was closed without any public finding of criminal obstruction.