I was and still intend to write a post arguing that all of the coverage of this comment from Trump is wrong. As I rant on Nicole Sandler’s show today, what we saw in these few moments was Trump, whose super power is in being able to command attention, not only failing that, but flubbing his lines when he tried to reassert his command over attention focused on Jeffrey Epstein.

The conspiracy theorists who put Trump in office will not let him take ahold of this conspiracy.

What we see in this exchange is — more than at any time in the last ten years, I argue — Trump’s super power of commanding where people focus their attention failing him.

So I want to write about how everyone is getting this wrong.

But first, I want to talk about how Trump’s Deep State can’t even Deep State competently.

Trump’s attempt to tamp this down, predictably, had the opposite effect, both because infighting over who fucked up the incompetent attempt to tamp it down, and the conspiracy theories that have arisen in the void.

Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer is at the pivot of both worlds, and she’s playing her part to perfection. She started things today by revealing that Dan Bongino — who actually doesn’t like how hard he has to work at FBI anyway — complaining about how the memo that attempted but failed to tamp all this down happened.

That led Todd Blanche, fresh off his efforts to make the Erez Reuveni disclosures worse, to weigh in, claiming there was no dispute about how to release the Epstein memo.

Meanwhile, Marc Caputo — who has close ties with Susie Wiles from way back — debunks Blanche’s claim of harmony,  describing that Wiles and Taylor Budowich witnessed anything but.

The intrigue: MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, a Bondi critic, first reported Friday on X that Bongino left work and that he and Patel were “furious” with the way Bondi had handled the case.

• Some Trump advisers have criticized Bondi, but Trump “loves Pam and thinks she’s great,” a senior White House official said.
• Those witnessing the Wednesday clash between Bondi and Bongino in the White House were Patel, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich.

The more important part of Caputo’s report, though, is that insiders blame Bongino for the “missing minute,” which provided the nutters reason to doubt the entire effort to tamp all this down.

Zoom in: At the center of the argument: a surveillance video from outside Epstein’s cell that the administration released, saying it was proof no one had entered the room before he killed himself.

• The 10-hour video had what has widely been called a “missing minute,” fueling conspiracy theories in MAGA’s online world about a cover-up involving Epstein’s death.
• The “missing minute,” authorities say, stemmed from an old surveillance recording system that goes down each day at midnight to reset and record anew. It takes a minute for that process to occur, which effectively means that 60 seconds of every day aren’t recorded.
• Bongino — who had pushed Epstein conspiracy theories as a MAGA-friendly podcast host before President Trump appointed him to help lead the FBI — had found the video and touted it publicly and privately as proof that Epstein hadn’t been murdered.

That conclusion — shared by FBI Director Kash Patel, another conspiracy theorist-turned-insider — angered many in Trump’s MAGA base, criticism that increased after Axios first reported the release of the video and a related memo.

• After the video’s “missing minute” was discovered, Bongino was blamed internally for the oversight, according to three sources.

Only, complaints about the video are only going to get worse. Wired describes that the metadata shows the video has been altered.

The “raw” file shows clear signs of having been processed using an Adobe product, most likely Premiere, based on metadata that specifically references file extensions used by the video editing software. According to experts, Adobe software, including Premiere and Photoshop, leaves traces in exported files, often embedding metadata that logs which assets were used and what actions were taken during editing. In this case, the metadata indicates the file was saved at least four times over a 23-minute span on May 23, 2025, by a Windows user account called “MJCOLE~1.” The metadata does not show whether the footage was modified before each time it was saved.

The embedded data suggest the video is not a continuous, unaltered export from a surveillance system, but a composite assembled from at least two separate MP4 files. The metadata includes references to Premiere project files and two specific source clips—2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4 and 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4. These entries appear under a metadata section labeled “Ingredients,” part of Adobe’s internal schema for tracking source material used in edited exports. The metadata does not make clear where in the video the two clips were spliced together.

Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, reviewed the metadata at WIRED’s request. Farid is a recognized expert in the analysis of digital images and the detection of manipulated media, including deepfakes. He has testified in numerous court cases involving digital evidence.

Farid says the metadata raises immediate concerns about chain of custody—the documented handling of digital evidence from collection to presentation in a courtroom. Just like physical evidence, he explains, digital evidence must be handled in a way that preserves its integrity; metadata, while not always precise, can provide important clues about whether that integrity has been compromised.

“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 says. “Do a direct export from the original system—no monkey business.”

Farid points to another anomaly: The video’s aspect ratio shifts noticeably at several points. “Why am I suddenly seeing a different aspect ratio?” he asks.

It is abundantly likely that all of this is easily explained. I noted in my first post that the missing minute probably comes from MCC’s ancient surveillance equipment. And it sounds like someone packaged this up for Bongino.

Of course, none of that is going to matter if and when people confirm that the video doesn’t even show Epstein’s cell, as multiple people claim.

Every single wrinkle will only serve to feed the conspiracy theorists whose attention Trump cannot manage to command.

Here’s the thing, though. I think Bondi probably did shut down these investigations because they are inconvenient to Trump. Maybe it stems from nothing more than Trump’s demand to command attention; maybe it has to do with the known connections between Trump and the abuser looking damning no matter how close or far Trump is to the rape.

But because the Deputy Director of the FBI, an agency with thousands of people with expertise on this kind of thing, couldn’t manage to find someone who could hold his hand and explain basic things like chain of custody, they have all made it far, far worse.

Trump’s Deep State can’t even Deep State competently.

Update: The date of the saved video (May 23) was between the date when Bongino and Kash told Bartiromo that Epstein killed himself and the date when Bongino told Fox the FBI was going to release the video but first was, “taking time to clean up and enhance the video.”