When the U.S. Department of Justice released a nearly 11-hour video in early July that purported to show the last time Jeffrey Epstein was seen alive, people couldn’t help but notice that there was a full minute missing. Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted there was a simple explanation: That’s just how the jail’s antiquated camera systems work. But a new report claims Bondi isn’t telling the truth.
The report from CBS News cites a “government source familiar with the investigation” who told the news outlet that the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Department of Justice Inspector General all have a copy of the surveillance footage with the missing minute. The DOJ claimed in a letter that it was the “full raw” video, though Wired magazine found metadata evidence that the video was edited together from at least two source clips and saved multiple times.
Epstein, who was in jail on child sex trafficking allegations, was found dead in his cell at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center the morning of August 10, 2019, and his death was ruled a suicide. But many people believe Epstein didn’t actually kill himself and was instead murdered to keep him from talking about the powerful people in his orbit who allegedly abused children.
The video, which we’ve clipped below, shows the moment on the night of August 9 when the counter on the tape jumps from 11:58:58 p.m. to 12:00:00 a.m.
Neither of the green doors visible in the video actually shows the cell where Epstein was staying. Epstein was escorted to his cell at 7:49 PM after meeting with his lawyers, and a figure in an orange jumpsuit is seen moving from left to right in the video. Two cameras that were closer to his cell door and presumably gave a better view of his cell door “malfunctioned,” according to a report from Reuters published Aug. 28, 2019.
Bondi’s explanation for the missing minute of video was that the camera system simply reset each night and was so old that every video taken at the jail looked like that. During a cabinet meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump on July 8, reporters asked about the missing minute of video, and Trump was indignant that people were still talking about Epstein before allowing Bondi to speak.
“We released the video showing definitively… the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was, showing he committed suicide,” Bondi said. “And what was on that… there was a minute that was off the counter. And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every year… every, um, night they redo that video. It’s old, it’s from like 1999.”
Bondi appeared flustered, to say the least. And she went on to suggest that she was going to release evidence showing that a minute is always missing. “So every night the video is reset,” Bondi said. “And every night should have the same minute missing. So we’re looking for that video to release that as well, showing that a minute is missing every night. And that’s it on Epstein.”
DOJ didn’t respond to questions emailed Tuesday morning about whether the agency is in possession of the missing minute. Gizmodo also asked about whether Bondi was going to ever release video showing that there’s always a minute missing from the surveillance videos at that jail. As far as we can tell, that never happened.
Wired also found evidence that there may be two additional minutes missing, though there’s some question about whether that discrepancy has more to do with frame rates or the video being slightly sped up. But whether it’s a minute or three minutes, something isn’t adding up.
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