U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019.

Surveillance video footage from outside the jail cell of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein during his first reported suicide attempt in July has been inadvertently deleted, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday.

Prosecutors, in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said the video was deleted as the result of a jailhouse computer error about the location of Epstein's cellmate at the time Epstein tried to kill himself.

A lawyer for Epstein's former cellmate said that it was "deeply troubling" to learn that the footage no longer exists. That lawyer, Bruce Barket, has been trying since July to obtain the video.

The disclosure is just the latest in a series of black eyes for federal officials since Epstein's arrest in early July on charges of trafficking dozens of underage girls to satisfy his sexual obsessions at homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, from 2002 through 2005.

The biggest of those black eyes occurred in August when Epstein, a wealthy financier who was a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, died in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where he was being held without bond while awaiting trial.

The New York City Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging.

But that finding has been questioned by Epstein's lawyers and by others who believe he may have fallen victim to foul play.

Epstein's death remains under investigation by several federal agencies, including by the Bureau of Prisons, which operates the MCC.