• A draft statement from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office announcing Jeffrey Epstein’s death carries an August 9, 2019 date — the day before officials say he was found dead
• Surveillance logs from the same night show an unidentified orange-colored figure moving toward Epstein’s locked cell tier, with FBI and DOJ investigators reaching conflicting conclusions about what it was
• Epstein’s former cellmate has alleged in a pardon petition that the financier was deliberately left unprotected in federal custody

NEW YORK, NY (TDR) — Among the millions of pages released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act is a document that has reignited the most persistent questions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death: a draft federal statement announcing his death that is dated the day before he was officially found dead.

The document, labeled “Statement of Manhattan US Attorney on the Death of Defendant Jeffrey Epstein,” carries a header date of Friday, Aug. 9, 2019. According to Bureau of Prisons records and the New York City medical examiner, Epstein was not discovered unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center until the morning of Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019. He was pronounced dead at a hospital at 7:36 a.m. that morning.

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, with multiple versions bearing inconsistent redactions. Neither of the Aug. 9-dated versions included the phrase “apparent suicide” — language that appeared in the officially released statement.

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The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the discrepancy.

What the Document Shows — and What It Doesn’t

The document in question, identified as EFTA00013180 in Data Set 8 of the DOJ disclosures, uses language consistent with a post-death press release. The text states that Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell “earlier this morning” — phrasing that doesn’t align with a Friday date, since Epstein was found on a Saturday.

Analysts reviewing the files have offered several non-conspiratorial explanations: a clerical dating error, routine advance drafting of contingency statements, post-release metadata quirks or a document that was backdated during preparation. Government press offices do sometimes prepare draft statements ahead of anticipated events.

“Possible non-conspiratorial explanations include clerical dating errors, routine drafting of multiple statement versions in advance, or post-release metadata quirks.”

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That was the assessment from Factually, which reviewed the available reporting and noted that the existence of the dated draft “does not establish that officials announced a death before it occurred, nor does it overturn the official ruling that Epstein’s death was a suicide or supply definitive evidence of foul play.”

Still, the practice of pre-drafting death statements is rarely visible to the public — particularly in high-profile federal cases. And the document doesn’t exist in isolation. It surfaced alongside other records that have deepened questions about what happened inside the MCC on the night of Aug. 9, 2019.

The Orange Figure on the Staircase

Separately, CBS News reported that newly released DOJ documents show investigators reviewing surveillance footage flagged an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward Epstein’s isolated, locked housing tier at approximately 10:39 p.m. on Aug. 9 — hours before his body was discovered the next morning.

The FBI’s observation log described the image plainly:

“A flash of orange looks to be going up the L Tier stairs — could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that Tier.”

But the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General reached a different conclusion about the same footage, identifying the image as a corrections officer carrying orange-colored “linen or bedding.” Their final report described it as “an unidentified corrections officer” who “appeared to walk up the L Tier stairway, and then reappeared within view of the camera at 10:41 p.m.”

Two federal agencies. The same footage. Opposite conclusions.

CBS News consulted independent video analysts who reviewed the footage. Retired NYPD sergeant and forensic video expert Conor McCourt told the network the movement was more likely a person in an orange uniform than a corrections officer carrying linen. Four other leading video forensics experts concurred.

“To say that there’s no way that someone could get to that — the stairs up to his room — without being seen is false.”

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