Surveillance footage of Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night he died — released by the Department of Justice this week to support its claim that there was nothing suspicious about his death — contains metadata suggesting the footage was altered using Adobe Premiere Pro.
According to a report by WIRED, metadata embedded in the 11-hour "raw" surveillance footage shows it was not a direct export from the prison's surveillance system, instead indicating the video was processed using Adobe Premiere Pro, a professional video editing tool.
The footage, which the DOJ said covers the entirety of the time before Epstein was found dead in his cell in August 2019, appears to have been stitched together from at least two separate source clips, saved four times, and exported before it was uploaded to the DOJ website. The metadata reveals two source clips, Premiere project files, and attributes the edits to a Windows user account named "MJCOLE~1" on May 23, 2025, in a roughly 23-minute span.
Digital forensics expert Hany Farid, who reviewed the data for WIRED, said the file raises serious questions about chain of custody. "If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say no. Go back to the source. Do it right," Farid said.
Pam Bondi claimed the footage proved no one entered the area outside Epstein's cell during the critical overnight hours, but noted a gap of roughly one minute at midnight, which she explained as a daily reset in the prison surveillance system.
The DOJ has not explained why the "raw" video was processed in Premiere, referring questions back and forth between the FBI and Bureau of Prisons. According to WIRED, experts acknowledge the edits could be benign—like converting proprietary video formats—but in a case so mired in suspicion, the lack of transparency fuels further doubt.
Conspiracy researcher Mike Rothschild told WIRED this kind of ambiguity only makes speculation worse. "Whatever your flavor of Epstein conspiracy is," he said, "The video will help bolster it."
Originally published on Latin Times
