The long-speculated "missing minute" in the Jeffrey Epstein jail video has finally been released, and it turns out to be anticlimactic. The gap in footage, which had fueled online suspicion and conspiracy theories since the FBI first released jail footage earlier this year, was originally attributed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to a nightly DVR reset that caused a routine glitch. However, a more complete video version released Tuesday by the US House oversight committee contradicts that explanation and reveals nothing out of the ordinary during the disputed interval, beginning at 11:59pm on Aug. 9, 2019, per CBS News.
According to the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General, only two staff members, including a corrections officer and a "material handler" on his third consecutive shift, were primarily responsible for rounds in Epstein's unit that night. The footage shows the material handler leaving the guard desk and walking toward the exit just after midnight, with no apparent interaction with Epstein's cell area. The new video includes almost two hours of previously unseen video, spanning from 6pm on Aug. 9 to 7am the next morning, as opposed to 7:40pm to 6:40am with the earlier version, the Guardian reports.
Just before 7pm, Epstein is escorted to the jail's G tier, where he was taken to a shower stall to make an unmonitored phone call in violation of policy. He's seen returning to his cell in L tier at 7:49pm. He was found unresponsive at 6:30am. The official ruling remains suicide. Of note: The latest footage is of noticeably lower quality than the FBI's previous release, with missing metadata, reduced resolution, and a ghosting effect experts say could be related to how the video was exported from the DVR system. They say the footage might not be a true raw export, but possibly a screen recording.