Both analyses found that the two clips, labeled “2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4” and “2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4,” were stitched together. The first clip is 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 16 seconds long, but only the first 4 hours, 16 minutes, and 23.368 seconds appears in the published version, meaning nearly 2 minutes and 53 seconds were cut from the end. According to the metadata, the cut occurs just at 11:58:58 pm. The cut is milliseconds before the one-minute recording gap that Bondi said was caused by a quirk of the surveillance system. The second clip, “2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4,” picks up immediately afterward, continuing the footage from 12:00:00 am until 6:40:00 am.
WIRED reviewed its findings with two independent video forensics experts, each with over 15 years of experience in Premiere and video production, who confirmed that the edit occurred just before the missing minute mark and that approximately three minutes of footage were cut from the original clip.
The FBI released both “raw” and enhanced versions of the video. Both versions include internal comment markers, annotations typically used in editing software to flag moments of interest. The enhanced version, which the FBI referred to as Video 2, contains 15 such markers that apparently correspond to visible movement near “46 door” at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). This door is near the cell block where Epstein was being held while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. These markers appear to have been left by analysts during their review, but they do not include the original comment text.
According to a 2023 report by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), only two cameras in the vicinity of the Special Housing Unit (SHU), the area of the MCC where Epstein was held, were filming and recording at the time of his death. According to the report, the camera that recorded the footage the DOJ released July 7 captured video of a large portion of the SHU common area and parts of the stairways leading to various “tiers,” one of which housed Epstein’s cell.
The OIG report notes that the MCC’s surveillance system was outdated at the time of Epstein’s death, “had not been properly maintained,” and that the DVR hard drives that stored the video files “frequently malfunctioned and needed to be replaced.”
Both the 2023 OIG report and the DOJ-FBI memo published last week state that anyone entering or attempting to access the tier containing Epstein’s cell from the SHU common area on August 9 or 10, 2019, would have been visible on that camera. However, Epstein’s cell door itself was not within the camera’s field of view. The stairway leading to the tier where he was held was also partially obstructed and difficult to see clearly on the video. (A second camera, which covered the “ninth-floor fire exit and two of the floor’s four elevators,” was also filming at the time, according to the OIG report.)
Amid backlash from supporters and critics alike, President Donald Trump defended Bondi on Saturday, saying she was doing a “fantastic job.”
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”
