One minute of missing surveillance footage from Jeffrey Epstein’s final hours before his suicide has surfaced in a new document dump on the late sex offender.
Conspiracy theories have swirled ever since observers spotted the mysterious 61-second gap in the 11 hours of “full raw” footage from inside New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center that the Justice Department and FBI released in early July.
A digital clock visible on the bottom left corner of the footage jumps from 11:58:58 p.m. on August 9, 2019, to 12:00:00 a.m. on August 10, 2019. Attorney General Pam Bondi previously claimed the same minute is skipped each night due to an outdated recording system that resets at midnight.
Now, the previously missing minute of footage has emerged after the GOP-led House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department for more than 33,000 pages of Epstein-related documents, which were released on Tuesday evening.
The new footage was contained within two additional hours of newly-released recordings, according to the BBC. Fox News Digital confirmed that the footage in the latest tranche of files shows the camera data switching at about midnight.
After the release on Tuesday, the outlet combined the clips, showing no lapse in the surveillance tape. The fragment itself shows little beyond several guards working near Epstein’s cell.
The attorney general’s office has yet to comment on the newly released footage.
Analysis by Wired in July first challenged the administration’s claims that the “raw” surveillance footage was unedited.
Forensic experts who worked with the magazine to analyze the metadata embedded in the video concluded that the footage had been “modified,” most likely using Adobe Premiere Pro editing software.
Professor Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at UC Berkeley, told Wired that the footage would not be considered valid evidence in court. Farid also questioned why the aspect ratio “suddenly” shifts.
Forensic video analysts who reviewed the footage for CBS News later that month said the video’s metadata showed the file was first created on May 23 of this year, not in 2019.
Beyond the missing minute, the footage released on Tuesday also shows Epstein being chaperoned through the detention centre to make a phone call, according to CBS News.
The sprawling file dump, shared via Google Drive and Dropbox, contained more than just video: thousands of court filings, emails, audio recordings, and other documents.
Democrats downplayed the significance of the release, with committee member Robert Garcia stating that “97 percent” of the material was already public.
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