Experts say there are flaws with the official explanation for why a shadowy figure moved in the direction of Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night he died.
A mysterious “orange shape” was recorded ascending the stairs to where Epstein’s cell was located, which federal investigators previously concluded was a corrections officer carrying up “linen or inmate clothing” on Epstein’s final night alive.
Conor McCourt, a retired NYPD sergeant and forensic video expert, told CBS News he disagrees with the conclusion reached by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General.
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“It’s more likely it’s a person in an [orange] uniform,” he said. More specifically, a person wearing an orange inmate jumpsuit. CBS reported that other forensics experts were also “skeptical” of the conclusion reached by federal investigators.
There is a great deal of importance in who—or what—that grainy orange figure is. It traveled up the stairs to Epstein’s cell block around 10:40 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2019, and is the last recorded movement in the direction of Epstein’s cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center before his body was discovered by guards the next morning.
CBS reports that a second camera’s recording could provide crucial evidence, but is being withheld by investigators. It also noted that the corrections officers on duty failed to follow protocol that required check-ins every 30 minutes on Epstein, who was on suicide watch and temporarily had no cellmate.
The network reported that the staircase leading to Epstein’s cell block could be ascended without being recorded by a security camera, as the majority of the stairs are out of its view. CBS reported this contradicts claims by investigators and Trump officials, including Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who asserted that the security camera would have recorded anyone who walked up the stairs.
“To say that there’s no way that someone could get to that, the stairs up to his room, without being seen is false,” the video forensics expert Jim Stafford told CBS. Four other experts in the field reportedly agreed with Stafford’s assessment.
The Office of the Inspector General addressed the theories explored by CBS in a statement to the network.
“The OIG appreciates the careful review of our report,” the statement reads. “Our comprehensive assessment of the circumstances over the weeks, days, and hours before Epstein’s death included the effects of the longstanding, chronic staffing crisis in the [Bureau of Prisons] and the BOP’s failure to provide and maintain quality camera coverage within its facilities. As CBS notes, nothing in its analysis changed or modified the OIG’s conclusions or recommendations.”
Officials in the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, have said that all evidence points to Epstein’s cause of death being suicide. Still, debate over whether the alleged sex trafficker died via suicide or was murdered—as his brother, Mark, and many MAGA figures believe—has become the most oft-discussed conspiracy theory in America.
Adding fuel to conspiracies is President Donald Trump’s relationship with Epstein. He reportedly wrote Epstein a personal letter and drew him a doodle to celebrate the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday in 2003. In 2017, Epstein told a biographer—in a recording first obtained by the Daily Beast—that Trump was his “closest friend.” The duo were photographed smiling together on numerous occasions in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump has denied that he ever wrote Epstein a birthday letter.
Trump has pushed America to move on from its Epstein craze, but scrutiny into the case—and the president’s ties to the world’s most infamous sex offender—continues to ramp up by the day.
Fervor regarding Epstein reignited on July 7, when a memo written by the DOJ and FBI determined that Epstein died via suicide and that there was no so-called “Epstein list” that implicated his rumored clients.
The memo, made public mere months after Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that an Epstein client list was sitting on her desk, split MAGA in two. A deeper look into the circumstances around Epstein’s death followed.
Tuesday’s report by CBS noted that “raw footage” from the night of Epstein’s death was not actually raw. Experts pointed out that the footage had a computer cursor and an onscreen menu at one point, a telltale sign that the footage was actually a screen recording.
Also being scrutinized is the so-called “missing minute,” when the operating security camera nearest to Epstein’s cell stopped recording one minute before midnight.
Bondi has explained the mystery minute as the result of a nightly reset of an outdated security system. However, a high-level source told CBS that federal agencies have “unedited copies of the video, and those copies do not have a missing minute.”
