A fake video purporting to show Jeffrey Epstein taking his own life inside a prison cell made rounds on social media after it was spotted in the Justice Department’s massive file dump.
A grainy 12-second clip shows a white-haired man in an orange prison jumpsuit kneeling on the floor of a prison cell while seemingly trying to choke himself. The video was timestamped 4:29 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019, just two hours before Epstein was found dead with a noose around his neck at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York.
But the clip has been on YouTube since 2020, with the original poster indicating in the caption that they created the video by playing around with “rendering 3D graphics.” An administration official also confirmed to the New York Post that the clip is bogus. It has since been taken down from the DOJ website.
Social media sleuths pieced together the massive trove of Epstein files released on Friday to get to the bottom of where the video came from.
The video appears to have come from a letter written to investigators by an individual seeking to confirm its veracity.
“Dear investigators, Came across a purported video of Epstein’s suicide (leaked by anonymous source),” the person wrote, attaching a link to the YouTube video. “Is this real???”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Epstein’s death while awaiting trial for federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges has long been at the center of controversy and conspiracy.
In July, the DOJ further fueled wild speculation when it released nearly 11 hours of CCTV footage from the Metropolitan Correctional Facility on the day of Epstein’s death to support the claim that he took his own life.
The supposedly full and unedited footage, however, was missing an entire minute from 11:59 p.m. to 12 a.m. Attorney General Pam Bondi explained that it was caused by a system reset every night. A forensic analysis by WIRED magazine later found that the “missing minute” actually lasted 2 minutes and 53 seconds.
Two months later, the sought-after minute appeared in another bulk drop, debunking Bondi’s claims. The clip showed very little apart from guards working near Epstein’s cell.
President Donald Trump, a longtime Epstein pal, continued to distance himself from the convicted sex offender on Monday by claiming that “everybody was friendly with this guy.”
“He was around. He was all over Palm Beach and other places,” he told reporters. “I actually threw him out of Mar-a-Lago.”
The post DOJ Releases Gruesome Fake Epstein Video in File Dump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
