Epstein's Missing Minute Found
We're back to see if we can find Epstein's missing minute and hash out what it all means. Make sure to read our post from July 24, 2025, to learn how we break down the videos released by the DOJ in July 2025.
Once again, Stacy Eldridge and Becky Passmore are here to provide the facts we found by conducting digital forensic examinations. You can hear all the details in our latest podcast episode, Epstein’s Missing Minute Found on our podcast Parsing the Truth: One Byte at a Time. Why should you care? We're both former FBI Senior Forensic Examiners, and we're here to share the facts. We also embedded the YouTube episode at the bottom of this post.
On September 2, 2025, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released 33,295 pages of Epstein-related records that were provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. We downloaded the files from the provided Google Drive link and searched for any jail-related videos. The videos were found in /Prod 01_20250822/VOL0001/NATIVES/NATIVE008. Next, the files were hashed.
Relevant Files
Table 1 - Relevant Files
A HELPFUL CLUE
The file 20250822.dat provided a clue that some sort of eDiscovery software was used to produce the files, and that same file allowed us to determine the very detailed file names of the one-hour prison video chunks. The original filenames and new filenames are listed in Table 1 above.
STARTING OUR ANALYSIS
Start with the Big Stuff
We first reviewed the two largest files, DOJ-OGR-00022168.MP4 and DOJ-OGR-00022169.MP4, which appear to visually match the respective DOJ videos from July 2025: video1.mp4 and video2.mp4. By reviewing 20250822.dat, we were able to see that the files used to create DOJ-OGR-00022168.MP4 and DOJ-OGR-00022169.MP4 were indeed video1.mp4 and video2.mp4.
File Metadata
The EXIF tool command "exiftool -ee3 -U -G3:1 -api requestall=3 -api largefilesupport" was used to collect the EXIF data from all video files.
A Comparison of DOJ-OGR-00022168.MP4 and video1.mp4
DOJ-OGR-00022168.MP4 still contains basic EXIF metadata; however, the XMP tags that contained the Adobe information in video1.mp4 are now absent. It did, however, still contain the QuickTime tags, which indicated the Create Date, Modify Date, Time Scale, and Duration, all of which match video1.mp4 as shown in the tables below. The removal of the metadata resulted in the hash value of DOJ-OGR-00022168.MP4 being changed, and it no longer matches the hash for video1.mp4. The removal of the metadata is most likely a direct result of the files being processed with the eDiscovery software. It is unknown if this was a user-selected choice or the default to remove certain metadata.
Table 3 - video1.mp4 EXIF Data
13 Newly Released Files
13 new video files from the prison were also released yesterday. The videos begin on 8/9/2019 at 6:00:08 AM and continue until 8/10/2019 at 7:00.48 AM. Each video is approximately 1 hour long. These videos are a lower quality and do not show the word "play" on the screen, but instead have the name of the camera and the date and time of the video embedded centered and towards the bottom of the frame within the video. These videos also had very specific file names that matched the start and end times of the video, as seen in the table below.
Table 4 - One Video Segment Original File Names
All of the one-hour segment files have a file system modified date between 8/4/2025 03:52:00 -05:00 and 8/4/2025 03:52:06 -05:00. These times are likely a reflection of the time the eDiscovery tool finished producing these files. A review of the EXIF metadata revealed very little information. There are no created or modified dates and times contained in the QuickTime, Track1, or Track2 tags. It's unknown if this data was never included in the original files or if this was something that was stripped off by the eDiscovery tool.
ARE THESE THE RAW FILES?
Are these the raw files? Are these the original video files? Who knows... Since there is very little metadata contained within the 13 new files, it's difficult to make a determination. However, based on what is available, this is what we would expect to see when videos are extracted from a DVR system. Again, we have to remember this was an older DVR system, and that could certainly account for the lower quality videos and lack of EXIF metadata. We also don't know what brand the DVR system was nor it's capabilities or lack thereof.
WE FOUND THE MISSING MINUTE
It turns out there is no nightly reboot of the DVR. It turns out there is no missing minute. We found the missing minute in the file DOJ-OGR-00022154.MP4. During our review of the missing minute (or should we say found minute), we were able to see someone walk off camera towards Epstein's cell at 11:59:44 PM on 8/9/2019. He then reappears on frame at approximately 12:01:25 AM on 8/10/2019. His reappearance was always in video1.mp4. He then ascends the stairs and uses the phone to request an exit and leaves the floor at 12:02:02 AM.
WE'RE STILL MISSING 2 VIDEO FILES
The DOJ may have provided 13 additional prison video files, but there are still two missing videos. We are missing the two video files that were used to create video1.mp4. Those files were listed in the XMP tags that contained the Adobe information. We're specifically looking for the files 2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4 and 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4.
QUESTIONS WE DON'T HAVE ANSWERS TO YET
- What is the origin of the story of a "system reboot" that led to the missing minute?
- What time did 2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4 and 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4 start and end?
- Did 2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4 and 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4 ever include the missing minute?
- Was the missing minute cut intentionally during editing, or was it simply never captured during the screencapture?
- Were the 13 new prison videos exported directly from the DVR system? If so, when?
- Provide the original files listed below in their original state before they were processed with the eDiscovery tool
- 2019.08.09 - 6 p.m. (18.00.09 - 19.00.33).mp4
- 2019.08.09 - 7 p.m. (19.00.34 - 19.59.55).mp
- 2019.08.09 - 8 p.m. (19.59.56 - 21.00.20).mp4
- 2019.08.09 - 9 p.m. (21.00.21 - 22.00.45).mp4
- 2019.08.09 - 10 p.m. (22.00.46 - 23.00.08).mp4
- 2019.08.09 - 11 p.m. (23.00.09 - 23.59.59).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 1 a.m. (01.00.24 - 02.00.48).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 12 a.m. (23.59.59 - 01.00.23).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 2 a.m. (02.00.49 - 03.00.11).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 3 a.m. (03.00.11 - 04.00.36).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 4 a.m. (04.00.36 - 04.59.58).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 5 a.m. (04.59.59 - 06.00.23).mp4
- 2019.08.10 - 6 a.m. (06.00.24 - 07.00.48).mp4
- Provide the "ingredients" that were used to create video1.mp4
- 2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4
- 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4
Tools Used
- Video played with Media Player Classic v.2.5.1
- Video played with VLC Media Player v.3.0.20
- EXIF Data and Meta Data Extracted with ExifTool v.13.29
- Hasher v.2.1.0
File Hashes
Table 6 - File Hashes
*The findings and conclusions presented in this report are based on the information available to us at the time of the analysis and my professional knowledge as of this date. New evidence or information may alter these conclusions.
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