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Missing Minute

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. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said at a White House cabinet meeting that the missing minute was the result of a regular reset of the recording system each night.

The video (archived here) was posted on the Justice Department website on July 3, 2025. This clip captured by Lead Stories shows the jump in the edit:

(Source: screen capture by Lead Stories)

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.

Attorney General Bondi addressed the missing minute during a White House cabinet meeting on July 8, 2025, saying it was the result of a regular reset of the recording system.

The minute missing from the video -- we released the video showing definitively... The video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was, showing he committed suicide. And what was on that -- there was a minute that was off the counter. And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video. It's old 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 them a minute is missing every night. And that's it on Epstein.

"The Justice Department had not responded to Lead Stories' emailed questions at the time of writing."