No ‘jaw-dropping’ video from Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell implicating celebrities in his death

Social media users made an explosive claim that they have footage from Jeffrey Epstein’s first jail cell that implicates such public figures as former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey in his death. 

But that footage is nowhere to be found.

A Jan. 20 Instagram post features a mugshot of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender and financier, and an image of Ghislanie Maxwell, his convicted accomplice and former socialite. The post also shows a playback image of Epstein’s prison cell after his death. 

The video’s caption says, "This jaw-dropping footage provides concrete evidence that Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Oprah, Rothschild and many more played a significant role in the incident, orchestrating it to protect their own interests!" 

The caption adds that users can watch the unedited video on a Telegram channel titled "Jeffrey Epstein Expose" by clicking a link in the user’s bio. (Telegram is a messaging platform.) 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The link in the user's bio took us to a private Telegram channel with three subscribers called "Tucker Carlson VS Jeffrey Epstein: The INTERVIEW of the century." 

A search for the Telegram channel listed in the caption brought up an "Epstein exposed" channel, but contained no videos from Epstein’s jail cell.

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on March 29, 2024 in una publicación en Facebook

"Los Simpson predicen la caída del puente en Maryland".

A 2023 Justice Department report about Epstein’s imprisonment at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center found that he had died from suicide by hanging in August 2019. The autopsy confirmed that Epstein’s death could not have been a homicide because he had no defensive wounds to signal one. 

The report also said Epstein was previously placed on suicide watch after he tried and failed to kill himselfin his prison cell on July 23, 2019. 

The Instagram post claims that there’s video from "Epstein’s first jail cell, which mysteriously went missing," but federal prosecutors said in 2020 that security footage from outside Epstein’s jail cell, where he had first tried suicide, was not saved and no longer exists. 

And the Instagram post’s image is from New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner from Epstein’s cell after Epstein’s death on Aug. 10, 2019, and not an image of Epstein’s cell where he made his failed suicide attempt a month earlier.  

In 2019, the New York Post reported that the Metropolitan Correctional Center does not have surveillance cameras inside of its cells. 

The Justice Department’s investigation found that some prison security cameras malfunctioned during Epstein’s death, but one camera positioned at the stairway leading up to Epstein’s cell was functioning. That camera found no one entering Epstein’s cell tier from a common room before Epstein was found dead. 

A resurfaced video of Epstein’s prison cell would surely have made headlines. But we used Google search and the Nexis news database and couldn’t find any news reports about a video from Epstein’s jail cell implicating prominent figures such as Winfrey and Clinton in Epstein’s death.  

We rate the claim that video footage from Epstein’s first jail cell has resurfaced and implicates former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Oprah Winfrey and other public figures in his death Pants on Fire!