Morning Joe had a barrel of snarky, skeptical laughs [see screencap] on Wednesday over the report that the video survey surveillance in the federal prison where Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019, during the first Trump term, systematically skipped one minute of recording every night at the same time while the system was being reset.
Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned that in a clip the show played at the beginning of the segment.
Scarborough & Co. stopped short of making what would have been an extremely inflammatory accusation. But their implication seemed clear: that Bondi was lying, and that the Trump administration, for nefarious purposes, had doctored the video.
Thus, Scarborough twice claimed that "they," i.e., the Trump administration, set up the system to work that way.
However, Bondi also stated that it's an old system, set up by the federal Bureau of Prisons in 1999, and that she intends to release the recordings to show that the one-minute gap occurred every night—not just the one when Epstein died.
Hmm, 1999. Checking with ChatGPT. In 1999, the President of the United States was . . . William Jefferson Clinton.
Scarborough continues to regularly express his outrage over Trump's suggestion that, as a congressman, Joe might have been complicit in the death of an aide. You'd think that Scarborough might be careful to avoid merrily making the most serious of insinuations in the Epstein case.
But perhaps this is Scarborough's idea of revenge.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
7/9/25
6:55 am EDTPAM BONDI: In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said, I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed. Meaning, the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that.
And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video. It's old from like 1999. So every night the video is reset and every night should have the same minute missing. So we're looking for that video to release that as well, showing that a minute is missing every night. And that's it, on Epstein.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So they have, Jonathan Lemire. I'm not a surveillance expert, but [laughs uncontrollably] they set up a system that has a minute missing [shouts] every night?
I'll tell you what we're going to do. I got this great new system we're going to set up in a prison because we want to make sure that nothing really, really bad happens. And so this system's great, and it's going to go all 24 hours.
But like, late at night when bad shit can really go down, what we're going to do is, we're going to have a minute missing so it can reset.
Is that, would you go, I'm curious, would you go to this surveillance company to set up your home security cameras?
JONATHAN LEMIRE: My understanding is for 23 hours and 59 minutes, it's the safest prison you could want.
SCARBOROUGH: They're the best.
LEMIRE: They're the best.
SCARBOROUGH: They are the best.
LEMIRE: You know, that last minute, you take your chances, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, this sort of explanation defies reason. And certainly it is remarkable on just the shift in tone here. I mean, President Trump himself has not spoken that much about Epstein, but plenty of people, you know, throughout. But plenty of people in this world have, for a very long time.
And that's what we're seeing. A bit of a real, almost, not civil war, but a real infighting in Trump world, in MAGA land right now, because they've been promised for so long to get the goods.
SCARBOROUGH: Hold on. We just lost a minute there. We just lost a minute. And again
LEMIRE: But until then, it was fine. Here we go. Ready? Everything's good. Oh, well. I'm sure nothing happened in that minute. Nothing at all.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, and the thing is, since everybody--
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Is he seen after that minute?
SCARBOROUGH: Since everybody knows. No. Since everybody knows that you have that minute that skips. I mean, thank God. Thank God they know that, because they'll make sure not to do anything bad during that minute whe the film doesn't work, because, as the attorney general said, they set up a system that just doesn't record every minute.
LEMIRE: Yeah, I can't see any possible, wrong possible worry spot. I can't see any possible concern about it being widely known that there's one minute that doesn't record. You know, that seems totally reasonable.
MIKA: Is the next time he's seen on that video, he's dead?
SCARBOROUGH: Hmm, I think so. He's not seen at all. He's never seen at all.
SCARBOROUGH: Not seen at all.
LEMIRE: I don't think he's seen at all.
SCARBOROUGH: You know, and I'd heard yesterday somebody say that Bill Barr had said, I looked through all of the minutes. I did it intentionally to know that nothing went awry.
Well, yeah. No, you didn't see everything, because you didn't see the minute that we now find out is not a bug, but a feature.
MIKA: It's a minute. It's a feature?
SCARBOROUGH: [Laughing, shouting] Who's ever heard of a prison surveillance camera that was set up to not record the same minute every day.
LEMIRE: They really should have read the fine print. Yeah, read the fine print. It's just right there. Look for that one minute. Sorry, that's just how it works.
