Nearly three minutes of prison surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death appears to have been cut from publicly released video, a metadata analysis by Wired has found. The missing segment, taken from hours of footage released by the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, raises new questions about video described by officials as “full” and “raw.”
One of the source clips was about 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, suggesting the footage was trimmed before its release, Wired reported.
The finding follows an initial analysis from Wired that discovered the supposedly “raw” footage, captured hours before Epstein’s death, had been stitched together from two separate files in the video editing software Adobe Premiere Pro.
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Epstein, a financier with access to numerous prominent politicians and social figures, including President Donald Trump, died in his jail cell in New York on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide. Conspiracy theorists, however, believe Epstein was killed to keep him from disclosing the names of powerful people involved in a sex ring involving underage girls.
Connected to the one-minute gap?
The missing three minutes may also be tied to a one-minute gap in the footage between 11:58 pm and 12:00 a.m. Attorney General Pam Bondi, in response to widespread questioning over the minute-long gap, said the discrepancy was caused by a routine nightly reset of the video surveillance system.
The Department of Justice referred Wired’s inquiries to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment.
A 2023 report by the DOJ’s inspector general noted that only two cameras were recording in the area of the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
Neither camera captured footage from Epstein’s cell, the inspector general found, and the cameras “had not been properly maintained” and “frequently malfunctioned and needed to be replaced.”
Inflaming mistrust
The latest findings regarding the video footage may further inflame mistrust around the federal government’s handling of the Epstein case.
During the campaign, Trump suggested that he would release new details about the Epstein case. But many of his followers were incensed during the week of July 6, when the DOJ released a memo concluding that Epstein had no “client list” and that investigators found no evidence he had blackmailed prominent figures to keep their involvement quiet. The memo also repeated the finding that the disgraced financier had taken his own life.
Trump has since called on his supporters to let go of the issue, and has referred to the Epstein files as a “hoax” put together by former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, both Democrats.
On Wednesday, July 16, Trump wrote on social media that his “PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls—,’ hook, line, and sinker.” He added, “I don’t want their support anymore!”
