A reporter pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday about the mysterious missing minute of surveillance footage from Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell the night he died.
The clock in the DOJ-released footage skips from 11:58:58 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., sparking fresh speculation. Bondi addressed the issue during a Cabinet meeting, claiming it was due to outdated prison systems. “Every night, the video is reset and every night should have the same minute missing,” she said.
“[T]he minute missing from the video, we released the video showing, definitively, the video was not conclusive but the evidence prior to it was, [with it] showing he committed suicide,” Bondi explained. She blamed old video systems dating back to “like 1999” at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
President Trump slammed the reporter’s question, calling it wildly inappropriate amid major events in Texas. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he snapped. “We have Texas, we have this… and people are still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
Trump added, “I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this… It just seems like a desecration.”
The DOJ and FBI concluded in a new memo that there is no Epstein “client list” and no evidence he was murdered. The agencies released over 10 hours of footage to support their conclusion that Epstein died by suicide.
Investigators say they recovered over 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence, but former Fox News host Tucker Carlson isn’t convinced. On Tuesday, he accused Bondi and the DOJ of covering up Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies.
“The only other explanation… is that intel services are at the very center of the story. U.S. and Israeli. And they’re being protected,” Carlson said. He dismissed the idea Trump was involved, saying, “He’s not that guy.”
Despite being on suicide watch, Epstein was left unchecked by guards who later falsified records. Though they were charged in 2019, prosecutors dropped the case after they met the terms of a deferred prosecution deal.