President Donald Trump’s Justice Department released a fake video on Monday that appeared to show Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child sex offender and former financier, in a jail cell on the night of his mysterious death. The video has since been removed from the Justice Department’s website.
In the video, which was also shared on X, formerly Twitter, a white-haired man in an orange prison jumpsuit can be seen kneeling next to a jail cell bunk bed. Throughout the video, the man appears to jerk his head back and forth multiple times while surrounded by formless orange cloth in the jail cell.
According to The New York Post, the fake Epstein video also includes a timestamp of 4:29 a.m. on August 10, 2019, which was roughly two hours prior to the discovery of Epstein’s deceased body at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility. The outlet noted that the jail cell in the video does not match the jail cell Epstein was in at the time of his death at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility.
The New York Post reported that an anonymous Trump administration official told the outlet that the video included in the release of additional Epstein documents was fake and had been circulated on YouTube for multiple years prior to Monday’s temporary release on the department’s website. The outlet noted that the video had previously been featured on 4chan and was flagged to investigators by a conspiracy theorist in Florida.
READ MORE: Videos: ‘Credible’ Epstein information should be released, Trump says
In an email accompanying the video that was obtained by WIRED, an individual identified as Ali Kabbaj notified law enforcement officials of a “purported video of Epstein’s suicide.”
In reference to the video, Kabbaj wrote, “Came across a purported video of Epstein’s suicide (leaked by anonymous source).”
“Is this real??? There is another version, better quality less choppy (as my re-encoding software seems to have made it choppy),” Kabbaj added.
Kabbaj told WIRED that he discovered the video of Epstein on the dark web and included it in an email to investigators in 20221; however, he never received a reply. “I’m shocked I’m in these files,” Kabbaj told WIRED.
The release of the fake Epstein video comes after Congress passed the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” in November to force U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department to release all of the unclassified documents, communications, and investigative materials concerning the Epstein case to provide better transparency for the American public amid increased interest in the case.
