Nearly three minutes of a surveillance video of Jeffrey Epstein’s prison wing is reportedly missing, leading people to wonder what those three minutes contained.
The cut footage in question was recorded the night Epstein, a convicted pedophile, died in August 2019, Mediaite reported.
His death was ruled a suicide.
Forensic experts made the discovery after reviewing the FBI’s “full raw” surveillance.
The Trump administration spoke about the footage last week by trying to negate rumors Epstein was murdered.
The report, however, has had the opposite effect.
WIRED published an analysis which revealed that the footage was pieced together with Adobe Premiere Pro.
One clip was reduced from 4 hours, 19 minutes long by 2 minutes and 53 seconds, per the report.
The cut happened at 11:58:58 p.m., just before a one-minute gap.
Attorney General Pam Bondi blamed the gap on a “nightly system reset.”
The second clip restarts at 12:00:00 a.m.
Per the report:
“The nearly three-minute discrepancy may be related to the widely reported one-minute gap—between 11:58:58 pm and 12:00:00 am—that attorney general Pam Bondi has attributed to a nightly system reset. The metadata confirms that the first video file, which showed footage from August 9, 2019, continued for several minutes beyond what appears in the final version of the video and was trimmed to the 11:58:58 pm mark, right before the jump to midnight. The cut to the first clip doesn’t necessarily mean that there is additional time unaccounted for—the second clip picks up at midnight, which suggests the two would overlap—nor does it prove that the missing minute was cut from the video.”
WIRED reported the metadata revealed the file was modified several times on May 23.
This goes against claims by officials that the “raw” video was not tampered with.
As the report reads:
“On Friday, WIRED published an analysis of metadata embedded in the video, confirmed by independent video forensics experts, which indicates that the file was assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website, where it was presented as ‘raw’ footage.
WIRED’s initial analysis found that those saves took place over a 23-minute span; however, further analysis of additional metadata shows the file was actually edited and saved several times over a period of more than three and a half hours on May 23, 2025. Specifically, the file was created at 4:48 pm and last modified at 8:16 pm ET that day. The metadata also references ‘MJCOLE~1,’ which is likely a shortened version of a longer username. While it likely begins with ‘MJCOLE,’ the full name cannot be determined from the metadata alone.”
When the Department of Justice was asked about the discrepancy by WIRED, it referred questions to the FBI who declined to comment.
