The U.S. Department of Justice on 7 July released what it called the “full raw” surveillance recording from the only working camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. The nearly 11-hour clip, covering the night of 9–10 Aug. 2019, was offered as proof that no one entered the tier where the financier was housed before he was found dead. Authorities reiterated their conclusion that Epstein, who awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges, died by suicide. Soon after publication, viewers noticed the video’s clock jumps from 11:58:59 p.m. to 12:00:00 a.m., creating an unexplained one-minute gap. Attorney General Pam Bondi attributed the break to a nightly system reset, but the omission fuelled fresh public doubts about the thoroughness of the 2019 investigation. On 15 July, technology outlet WIRED reported that embedded metadata shows the DOJ file was assembled from two separate clips and processed multiple times in Adobe Premiere Pro on 23 May 2025. Independent forensic experts consulted by the magazine confirmed that 2 minutes 53 seconds were trimmed from the end of the first source clip—beginning milliseconds before the widely noted one-minute timestamp leap—before the second clip picks up at midnight. The DOJ referred questions on the discrepancy to the FBI, which has declined to comment. Lawmakers and civil-liberties groups are seeking an explanation for why edited footage was presented as raw evidence, saying the new findings further cloud the government’s account of one of the most scrutinised deaths in federal custody.