MIAMI — Two corrections officers responsible for guarding Jeffrey Epstein on the night in August when he was found hanging in his jail cell were charged on Tuesday with failing to do their jobs and then covering up their dereliction.

Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, officers at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, were charged with making false records and conspiring to interfere with the functions of the federal prison.

Noel, 31, and Thomas, 41, failed to check on Epstein every half hour as required, the indictment says, and falsified logs to make it appear they had in fact been monitoring the Palm Beach multimillionaire and sex offender on Aug. 9 and 10.

Instead of performing their duties, according to the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Noel and Thomas “sat at their desk, browsed the internet, and moved around the common area of the SHU (Special Housing Unit).”

“The defendants had a duty to ensure the safety and security of federal inmates in their care at the Metropolitan Correctional Center,” said Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Instead, they repeatedly failed to conduct mandated checks on inmates, and lied on official forms.”

Epstein, 66, was found dead in his cell early in the morning on Aug. 10. He was awaiting trial on charges of trafficking teenage girls for sex. Epstein had a long list of friends and associates in political, academic and scientific circles, and theories abound that his death was meant to silence him before he implicated others.

The New York City medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide by hanging — a finding that has since been challenged by Dr. Michael Baden.

The charges were unsealed on the same day that the Senate Judiciary Committee held an oversight hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The nation’s top prison administrator, Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, told committee members, who expressed skepticism about the official cause of death, that FBI agents are looking at the possibility that a “criminal enterprise” played a role in that death.