A reporter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday about the missing minute in the released footage of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the night that he died.
The digital clock in the footage, released on Monday by the Department of Justice (DOJ), skipped from 11:58:58 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., which has raised questions about what happened to the missing footage. Bondi said during a cabinet meeting that missing footage is a result of the Metropolitan Correctional Center resetting the cameras every night, and that the DOJ will release more information to show that a minute is missing from the prison’s footage at the same time each night.
“[T]he minute missing from the video, we released the video showing, definitively, the video was not conclusive but the evidence prior to it was, [with it] showing he committed suicide,” Bondi said. “And on that, there was a minute that was off the counter and what we learned from Bureau of Prisons is that every night, they redo that video, it’s old. It’s from like 1999. So every night, the video is reset 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.”
WATCH:
President Donald Trump criticized the media for continuing to give Epstein press during a time of crisis in Central Texas, where a flash flood in the Guadalupe River killed over 100 people.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump asked. “This guy’s been talked about for years. We have Texas, we have this, we all of the things … And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable … I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI’s “systematic review” found no evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful figures or had been killed by an outside source in 2019. The agency released over 10 hours of footage from outside of Epstein’s cell to dispute longstanding speculations that he did not die by suicide inside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
The FBI further conducted extensive physical and digital searches, uncovering more than 300 gigabytes of data and related physical evidence.
Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson accused Bondi on Tuesday of covering up information about Epstein’s death to protect intelligence agencies.
“But more, I think convincing is that this is all information that the Biden administration had. And if there was evidence that Trump had been involved in illegal sexual activity, you think the people who made up Russiagate wouldn’t have leaked it? Come on now,” Carlson said. “So the only other explanation that I can think of … is that intel services are at the very center of the story. U.S. and Israeli. And they’re being protected.”
Prison guards found a lifeless Epstein with a noose around his neck inside his cell on Aug. 10, 2019. Before his death, the disgraced pedophile was under psychological evaluation after he had attempted suicide on July 23, 2019, according to a CNN timeline of Epstein’s death.
Despite being under careful evaluation, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, the two correctional officers on duty, did not perform the required 12 a.m., 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. counts and completed a form falsely saying that they did. The DOJ charged them in November 2019 with one count of “conspiring to defraud the U.S.” by “impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the MCC” and for falsifying records, though the charges were later dropped after prosecutors said they had complied with their deferred prosecution agreement.
Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother, told “Fox & Friends” in October 2019 that Epstein’s autopsy was more consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicidal hanging.
Recorded evidence was only available from one camera due to a malfunction at the prison, causing recordings to be made for only about half of the cameras, according to a DOJ Inspector General’s report. Personnel discovered the failure on Aug. 8, 2019, but did not fix the cameras until after Epstein had died.
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