Newly released Epstein files include a draft statement attributed to federal prosecutors that is dated the day before Jeffrey Epstein was found dead.
The draft appears among at least 23 documents in the disclosure labeled as statements from the Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A review of the records shows multiple versions of similar statements with inconsistent redactions—some leaving phone numbers or names visible, others blacking out nearly all identifying information.
One draft bears a date of Aug. 9, 2019, the day before Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death have been repeatedly scrutinized.
Epstein’s former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, claimed in a pardon petition filed last summer and recently obtained by the Daily Beast that Epstein was deliberately left unprotected in federal custody.
Tartaglione, a former police officer convicted of multiple murders, alleged that prison officials knowingly housed Epstein with an accused mass murderer despite earlier reports that the disgraced financier had raised concerns about his safety weeks before his death.
The claims were not substantiated, and Epstein’s death was officially ruled a suicide.
Newly released records reviewed by CBS News have intensified questions about what happened inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night before Epstein was found dead.
Justice Department documents show investigators reviewing jail surveillance footage flagged an orange-colored figure moving up a staircase toward the locked tier housing Epstein’s cell at about 10:39 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2019—hours before his body was discovered the next morning.
An observation log described the figure as “possibly an inmate,” while a separate review by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General identified the same image as a corrections officer carrying orange-colored linen or bedding.
CBS reported that independent video analysts said the movement was more consistent with an inmate—or someone wearing an orange prison uniform—than a corrections officer. Prison employees told CBS that escorting an inmate at that hour would have been highly unusual.
The discrepancy stands in contrast to repeated official assertions that no one entered Epstein’s housing tier that night, raising further questions about activity near his cell during the estimated window of his death.
Against that backdrop, a draft statement dated Aug. 9—alongside multiple differently redacted versions attributed to federal prosecutors—has raised new questions about what officials were preparing in the hours before Epstein was found dead.
The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
