Newly released records in the Jeffrey Epstein case detail how the FBI scrambled to reconstruct jail surveillance video after the bureau had approved the destruction of its master copy. This action undermined Attorney General Pam Bondi’s earlier explanation for a one-minute gap that attracted significant attention online.
Last summer, Bondi said that a video recorded outside Epstein’s cell on the night he died in federal custody in 2019 was missing the minute between 11:59 p.m. and midnight because the prison’s surveillance system resets each night. “There was a minute that was off that counter, and what we learned from the Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video,” Bondi stated at that time. “Every night is reset, so every night should have that same missing minute,” she added. “So we’re looking for that video as well, to show it’s missing every night.”
The new documents, first reported this week by CBS News, describe a different sequence of events. They reveal that the Justice Department and FBI did not release a direct copy of the original recording in July. Instead, they produced a screen capture from a jail system called NiceVision, combining two files and leaving a 62-second gap that could not be captured during the re-recording.
According to CBS, an FBI agent received authorization in June 2024 to destroy an evidence item labeled 1B60, which records described as the master recording of “tapes containing the archive” of video images from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Another document later referenced the case’s closed status and internal evidence-handling rules as the reason for disposal.
By mid-2025, CBS reported, the department needed to reconstruct the footage for public release, initiating a technical effort that involved screen-capturing the video from the jail recorder and converting the files into an editable format. The July overview cited by CBS indicated that one file began at 7:40 p.m. and another at 12 a.m., with the gap occurring from 11:58:58 to 12:00 during the capture.
Even before the latest documents emerged, the handling of the video attracted outside scrutiny. Wired reported in July 2025 that metadata showed the video had been compiled from multiple clips using Adobe Premiere Pro. One source clip appeared longer than what was released, suggesting that footage had been cut.
After the Justice Department released the screen-captured version in July 2025, Bondi attributed the missing minute to a routine reset. Security system specialists interviewed by CBS at that time said this explanation did not fit how such systems typically operate.
The dispute intensified in early September 2025 when Congress released a fuller version of the same surveillance footage that included the missing minute, contradicting Bondi’s claim that the gap should appear every night. CBS reported that the extra minute showed nothing unusual in the hallway view.
The House Oversight Committee’s September 2025 release coincided with lawmakers seeking more Epstein-related information, but the Associated Press reported that much of what the committee published had already circulated in court records and prior articles.
The Justice Department has not given a detailed public explanation for why Bondi referenced a nightly reset instead of outlining the reconstruction process discussed in the new documents.
These latest revelations come as the administration faces renewed pressure from lawmakers and commentators to clarify what it has, what it has released, and why key items were managed in this way. The FBI records suggest that the controversy over the missing minute stemmed from how the footage was rebuilt, not from a routine system reset.
