(Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Epstein, the money manager charged with sex trafficking in minors, has been returned to a federal jail in lower Manhattan after he was found injured and unresponsive in his cell, according to people familiar with the matter.
Authorities are investigating whether Epstein was assaulted, possibly by another inmate, or if the injuries were self-inflicted. He was found in his cell Tuesday with marks on his neck, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named because details of the incident aren’t public.
Epstein has been held since his July 6 arrest in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. He was briefly detained in the general population at MCC, where he mingled with other inmates, but was soon moved to the facility’s highly restrictive 10 South wing, another person said.
More recently, he was moved again, to a slightly less secure area called 9 South, where he was held in a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer charged in a quadruple homicide in Orange County, New York, that person said. He was spotted Thursday in a third-floor conference room in the jail, seated alone, waiting to meet with his attorney, the person said.
NBC News reported that investigators have questioned Tartaglione about the incident.
“Any suggestion that Mr. Tartaglione assaulted anyone is a complete fabrication,” his lawyer Bruce Barket said in a statement. “This story is being leaked to retaliate against Mr. Tartaglione for complaining to the court about the deplorable conditions at the MCC.”
Barket said the defense made those complaints Monday in court and warned of possible retaliation.
A call to Epstein’s lawyer Martin Weinberg wasn’t returned. A representative of the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Epstein is at the jail and declined to comment further. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment.
Epstein is accused of molesting teenage girls from 2002 to 2005. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also include conspiracy, of sex trafficking in minors and conspiracy and says he has fully complied with the law for more than 14 years.
He pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution and served 13 months in prison, after U.S. prosecutors in that state agreed not to charge him with federal offenses. The agreement provoked outrage after the Miami Herald published an investigative series on it late last year and led to the resignation of President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, who as U.S. attorney in Miami at the time worked out the deal with Epstein’s lawyers.
Epstein filed papers on Tuesday morning indicating he’s appealing U.S. District Judge Richard Berman’s ruling last week rejecting his bail request. Berman reasoned that the affluent defendant was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Whatever the cause of Epstein’s injuries, the incident won’t help him win release on bail, said Alan Ellis, a defense attorney who isn’t involved in the case.
“If the judge let him out on bond and he were to flee the country, the judge is going to be under a lot of fire,” Ellis said.
The case is U.S. v. Epstein, 19-cr-490, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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