A new investigation into the prison surveillance video from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial death found inconsistencies in the government’s report regarding the convicted pedophile, according to CBS News. One of the more intriguing revelations from the report is that there was an “orange shape” spotted moving up the stairs leading to the tier housing Epstein.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. Epstein was found dead inside his prison cell of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, 2019. Six days later, the New York City medical examiner ruled Epstein’s cause of death a suicide via hanging — which ignited a firestorm of conspiracy theories.
CBS News reported that a third unidentified individual was seen in the unit on video that the feds never mentioned.
In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice released nearly 11 hours of surveillance video.
Citing “experts,” tech blog Wired recently reported that the “raw” file shows “clear signs of having been processed using an Adobe product, most likely Premiere, based on metadata that specifically references file extensions used by the video editing software.” The report claimed that using Adobe software often “leaves traces in exported files, often embedding metadata that logs which assets were used and what actions were taken during editing.”
“In this case, the metadata indicates the file was saved at least four times over a period of several hours on May 23, 2025, by a Windows user account called ‘MJCOLE~1,'” Wired stated. “The metadata does not show whether the footage was modified before each time it was saved.”
According to Wired‘s analysis, “one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release.”
This week, CBS News published an analysis of the surveillance footage from the night of Epstein’s death.
The analysis noted that there was an “orange shape” moving up the stairs to Epstein’s tier around 10:40 p.m. on the night of the convicted pedophile’s death.
The 2023 report on Epstein’s death released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General identified the “orange shape” as a corrections officer carrying linen or inmate clothing.
The video forensic experts expressed to CBS News that they were “skeptical about that interpretation and suggested that the shape could be a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit climbing the stairs.”
The Department of Justice said five days after Epstein’s death, the FBI seized the prison’s digital video recorder system, which contained the “raw footage” of the prison near his cell.
However, the experts told CBS News that the “presence of a cursor and onscreen menu raise questions” that the video is “raw footage.”
The video forensic experts said the prison footage was most likely a “screen recording rather than an export directly from a DVR system.”
“They said it was unlikely to have been an export of the raw footage and that instead, it appears to be two separate video segments that were stitched together,” CBS News reported.
CBS News also noted that the video feed “jumps forward a minute just before midnight and the aspect ratio changes, again calling into question the assertion the video released was the raw footage.”
The inspector general’s report stated that only two staff members entered the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center after midnight. The report identified the staff as the “morning watch operations lieutenant” and a correctional officer identified as “CO3.”
However, CBS News reported that a third unidentified individual was seen in the unit on the video that the feds never mentioned.
Citing video forensic experts, CBS News reported that the detailed video review raises suspicions regarding the federal government’s assertion that Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell.
“The CBS News review found the video does little to provide evidence to support claims that were later made by federal officials,” the news outlet stated. “Additionally, CBS News has identified multiple inconsistencies between that report and the video that raise serious questions about the accuracy of witness statements and the thoroughness of the government’s investigation.”
CBS News conceded that the video review “doesn’t refute the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide,” but actually “raises questions about the strength and credibility of the government’s investigation, which appears to have drawn conclusions from the video that are not readily observable.”
RELATED: Jeffrey Epstein threatened to expose Bill Gates’ affair with Russian bridge player: Report
High-ranking federal government officials have declared that Epstein committed suicide, despite suspicions by many.
In November 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press, “I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups.”
As Blaze News reported in May 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino claimed that Epstein died by suicide.
Patel said of people doubting that Epstein killed himself, “They have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the metropolitan detention center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”
“He killed himself,” Bongino declared. “Again, I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
Bongino proclaimed, “There’s video clear as day — he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out.”
The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General refuted the theories presented by CBS News.
“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,” the inspector general’s office told CBS News. “As CBS notes, nothing in its analysis changed or modified the OIG’s conclusions or recommendations.”
The FBI and the DOJ declined to offer a comment on the report by CBS News.
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