The prison guard on duty when Jeffrey Epstein died will go before Congress to answer questions as suspicions remain about the convicted sex offender’s final moments.
Tova Noel was one of the guards working at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York when the pedophile died while awaiting trial in August 2019.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced on Friday that the committee wants Noel to appear for a transcribed interview on March 26 as part of its ongoing investigation into Epstein.
In its letter to Noel, the committee chairman said that, based on public reporting and documents, the committee believed she had information that would assist in the investigation.
Epstein was found dead on August 10, 2019, in his prison cell. The authorities said he died by hanging. It happened after he was arrested in July on federal sex trafficking charges involving minors.
Noel and the other guard on duty, Michael Thomas, who found Epstein, were later arrested and charged with falsifying prison records.
They were accused of making it appear they were carrying out the required 30-minute rounds on Epstein, but the charges against them were eventually dismissed.
However, Noel has come under fresh scrutiny after recently released Justice Department files showed she had googled the pedophile minutes before he was found unresponsive and made a mysterious $5,000 cash deposit ten days before his apparent suicide.
Noel googled “latest on Epstein in jail” at 5:42 am and again at 5:52 am on August 10. Less than 40 minutes later, Thomas found the convicted sex offender unresponsive at 6:33 am.
The details about her search history in the FBI files were first reported by the New York Post.
Last year, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in an interview that she did not believe Epstein killed himself.
She said she had no firsthand knowledge of what happened, but did not think he was suicidal and believed he had been murdered in prison.
The committee has now conducted depositions with seven people as part of its investigation launched last year into Epstein’s crimes and the handling of the federal investigation into him and his death.
Those who have faced questioning to date include former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Labor Secretary and U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, billionaire Les Wexner, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Maxwell and Epstein’s personal accountant Richard Kahn, who went before the committee for questioning this week.
Epstein’s lawyer, Darren Indyke, will also go before the committee for a deposition next week on March 19.
