Newly released US Department of Justice (DOJ) documents have sparked fresh controversy over the death of sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in federal custody in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The documents include a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York dated August 9, 2019, a day before Epstein was officially found unresponsive in his cell on August 10 and later pronounced dead.
The statement, which appears to announce Epstein’s death, refers to him having been “found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead.”
That timing contradicts the established timeline from prison records, which show that corrections officers discovered Epstein’s body the following morning at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Date discrepancy sparks questions
The discrepancy has reignited questions about what really happened in Epstein’s final hours. Critics argue that the existence of a pre-dated announcement raises unsettling possibilities about the government’s knowledge of or involvement in the events of the night before his death.
Supporters of the official account say the mismatched date could be a clerical error or a premature draft that was never intended for public release, The Sunday Guardian reported.
Neither the DOJ nor the US Attorney’s Office has publicly addressed these specific inconsistencies.
DOJ discloses millions of new documents
The release of this document comes as the DOJ is disclosing millions of pages of materials related to Epstein’s case under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed to increase public access to investigative records.
However, the volume of material and the presence of redactions and conflicting information have made it difficult to fully clarify the circumstances of his death, CBS News reported.
Epstein’s death, officially ruled a suicide by hanging, abruptly ended one of the most high-profile federal prosecutions in recent history.
Over the years, it has fuelled widespread speculation and conspiracy theories about foul play, lapses in prison security, and potential cover-ups, particularly given failures in monitoring, camera malfunctions, and guard protocols on the night of his death.