Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing where the convicted pedophile was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, they are trained on the areas outside the cells and not inside, according to sources familiar with the setup there.

"Epstein was supposed to have a cellmate," reports Fox News. "But the person who was assigned to share a cell with Epstein was transferred on Friday before the 66-year-old's death."

"It was not immediately clear why the cellmate was transferred nor why no one else was assigned to room with Epstein."

The warden of the federal jail in New York City where wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself was replaced Tuesday on orders of Attorney General William Barr pending investigations into the incident, the Justice Department said.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons also placed two staffers at the Metropolitan Correctional Center who had been assigned to Epstein's cell unit on administrative leave as probes into the death of the accused child sex trafficker continue.

"Additional actions may be taken as the circumstances warrant," said Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.

Lamine N'Diaye is being replaced at MCC by acting warden James Petrucci, who had been warden of the federal prison in Otisville, New York.

Two New York City prison guards in charge of checking up on Jeffrey Epstein reportedly fell asleep and later falsified documents in an attempt to cover up their mistake on the eve of the alleged child sex trafficker's apparent suicide.

According to the New York Times, the guards dozed off for three hours, causing them to miss the Metropolitan Correctional Center's routine prisoner check. They then forged their supervision logs, which could come with criminal charges. On Tuesday, federal authorities removed the prison warden and the pair of guards from their roles.

The move by the Justice Department came amid mounting evidence that the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center may have bungled its responsibility to keep the 66-year-old Epstein from harming himself while he awaited trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls.

Dana Gottesfeld's husband Martin, who is serving a 10-year sentence for hacking, has spent three months in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center and has even drawn a picture of the special unit Epstein was imprisoned in.

"When you enter the prison it says something to the effect of, 'one of the harshest SHU's - that's a segregated housing unit - in the country,'" she told RT. "They're locked down for 23 to 24 hours a day, they get one 15 minute call a month."

"It's really harsh," she added. Security was "really intense" at the prison, she said, explaining that as a high profile case, her husband had "two guards and a lieutenant to transfer him between his solitary room to the visiting room."

"So they're very, very keen on security. They pay very special attention to high profile cases, so it's hard to imagine that Epstein would not be given at least a three guard escort," Gottesfeld said.

Last year, a prison guard at the jail, Victor Casado, pleaded guilty to taking more than $25,000 in cash bribes to smuggle cellphones, alcohol and food to a wealthy Turkish gold trader between 2016 and 2017.

He also received thousands of dollars in payments from another inmate, which were given to him by the prisoners relatives and a paralegal representing him.

Casado was sentenced in January to three years in prison by a judge who called the crime an assault on 'our entire system of justice'.

Reza Zarrab, who was the Turkish gold trader involved with bribing the guard, was in prison over a money laundering scheme to Iran.

He has previously testified in court that someone tried to assassinate him at the prison when he implemented Turkey's President Recep Tayip Erdogan in the scheme that would launder billions of dollars from the U.S. to Iran.

'I came face to face with an individual who was trying to take my life, and he had pulled a knife on me, and I was about to lose my life,' Zarrab testified in 2017.

'He said that he had received instructions to kill because I was cooperating.'

A former CIA employee, Joshua Adam Schulte, is also accused of leaking classified files while he was locked up in the federal prison.

Schulte was charged last year with stealing classified national defense information from the CIA in 2016. He is believed to be behind the 'Vault 7' and 'Vault 8' documents released by WikiLeaks.

Authorities found multiple cellphones in his cell at the prison when they raided it in October last year. Officials also found 13 email and social media accounts that Schulte was allegedly using to communicate with others outside the prison.

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