Nearly three minutes of footage were removed from surveillance video that the FBI and US Department of Justice described as “full raw” footage from near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before his death.
Newly uncovered metadata reveals that approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were cut from one of two clips that were stitched together to create the video. The removed footage begins at what investigators have called the “missing minute.”
The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death. However, the discovery of edited footage has raised new questions about how the material was assembled and presented.
The surveillance footage came from the only functioning camera near Epstein’s cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. Epstein was found dead in his cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Officials had presented the video as complete and unedited surveillance material from the critical time period before Epstein’s death. The metadata analysis now shows this characterization was inaccurate.
The revelation adds to ongoing questions about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death, which was officially ruled a suicide. The case has remained a subject of intense public scrutiny and conspiracy theories.
The edited nature of the supposedly raw footage is likely to fuel further demands for transparency in the investigation and raise questions about what information may have been omitted from the official record.
