The DOJ on Monday released shocking footage that appeared to be a recreation of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in his Manhattan jail cell — and it briefly set the Internet on fire until it was revealed to be fake.
The video was posted without explanation to the Justice Department’s website as part of its Epstein file dump — with the footage just the latest item among a trove of documents and images to be revealed after the complete horde was ordered released in November.
The grainy, 12-second, computer-generated clip showed a white-haired man in an orange jumpsuit struggling and jerking his head about while kneeling at the base of a jail-cell bunk bed.
The time stamp on the video was 4:29 a.m. Aug. 10, 2019 — two hours before the pedophile’s body was found in his cell that day at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility.
The scene in the video seemed to match Epstein’s cell, where officials determined he hung himself while awaiting trial for a litany of sex-trafficking charges.
But a closer examination of the clip showed things were not quite right – with a pile of orange prison clothes strewn about the ground looking like puddles without any texture, and the door to the jail cell not matching the one in Epstein’s behind-bars compartment.
It soon was revealed in another dumped document that the clip was in fact a fake video that circulated on 4chan and was flagged by investigators by a Florida conspiracy theorist.
A Trump administration official later confirmed to The Post that the video was bogus and has been on YouTube for years. It was eventually taken down from the DOJ’s site Monday.
But its appearance had already caused a flurry of interest online, with many viewers thinking footage of Epstein’s death had finally been revealed.
Hellbound and Down 