OK, so the only reason this is a story is that it happened in the jail where Jeffrey Epstein died, but still: The AP is reporting that federal investigators on Thursday found a loaded gun that had been smuggled into the jail where Epstein had been kept.

NEW: Federal officers have found a loaded gun smuggled inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center — the jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself — after a weeklong lockdown that turned up other contraband & led to a criminal probe into guard misconduct. https://t.co/5PJzExEV1Z

Mike Balsamo and Michael R. Sisak report:

Federal investigators found a loaded gun Thursday that had been smuggled into the jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself last summer, following a weeklong lockdown that turned up other contraband and led to a criminal probe into guard misconduct, the federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press.

The handgun was located by Bureau of Prisons officers inside a housing unit at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, prison officials said in a statement to the AP. It marked a massive breach of protocol and raised serious questions about the security practices in place at the Bureau of Prisons, which is responsible for more than 175,000 federal inmates, and specifically at the jail, which had been billed as one of the most secure in America. Officials have not said where specifically the gun had been found, or how it had been smuggled inside the jail.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into potential misconduct by guards, focusing on the flow of contraband into the lockup uncovered during the search for the gun, three people familiar with the matter told the AP. They were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.