Is one minute missing from the video posted by the Department of Justice showing the hallway outside the jail cell where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead? Yes, that's true: The 10-hour-long closed-circuit camera video posted on the Justice Department website on July 3, 2025, jumps from 11:58:58 p.m. on August 9, 2019, to 12:00:00 a.m. on August 10, 2019. The video ends about 10 minutes after Epstein was found dead inside his cell at 6:30 a.m. The Justice Department had not responded to Lead Stories' emailed questions about the missing minute at the time of writing.
The video (archived here) was posted on the Justice Department website on July 3, 2025. This 13-second clip captured by Lead Stories shows the jump in the edit:
This is what the video looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Screenshot of https://www.justice.gov/video-files/video1.mp4 by Lead Stories)
The Justice Department concluded that Epstein, who was being held in a federal jail in New York City while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, killed himself in his cell on August 10, 2019. The posting of the video nearly six years later came amid increased demands for transparency in investigations of Epstein's life and death.
Lead Stories will update this article if we receive a statement from the Justice Department.
