Imagine you’re handed 11 hours of supposedly untouched security camera footage that could clarify whether one of the most high-profile sex criminals of our time died by his own hand or under suspicious circumstances…and it’s missing the exact minute he dies. A lot of people would naturally assume that’s not a coincidence.

According to a Wired investigation, the Jeffrey Epstein prison video’s metadata reveals that it was tampered with—or at the very least heavily edited—using Adobe Premiere Pro. Experts noticed it had been Frankensteined together from multiple clips, saved over repeatedly, and generally treated more like a VHS tape with old recordings of Happy Days and a child’s birthday party on it than a key piece of evidence in one of the most controversial deaths in modern memory.

Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists, who generally don’t need a whole lot to fuel their imaginations, are now digging into this like it’s the Zapruder film. One such figure, former Fox News host turned FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, reportedly threatened to “torch” Attorney General Pam Bondi over the DOJ’s botched handling of the video, according to NBC sources.

That sense of institutional rot isn’t helped by the fact that Donald Trump, once cozy with Epstein and previously promising to release the so-called “Epstein Files,” is now actively trying to convince his furious supporters that they should get over the whole Epstein thing.

In a long, rambling post on his social media network Truth Social, Trump, in one gigantic block of text, simultaneously tried to convince his rabid conspiratorial supporters that the whole Epstein story…

1. Doesn’t matter at all.
2. But no, it’s all actually the Democrats’ fault.
3. And, oh yeah, the election was rigged, but not the ones that I won.
4. Leave Pam Bondi alone; she’s just doing her job and is in no way covering up for me.
5. Also, don’t forget that Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t matter.
6. There’s nothing to see here.

It all reeks of a man and a presidential administration that is chasing cars and has no idea what to do with them once they catch them. He is vocally defending Pam Bondi and the DOJ, shifting all the blame to other people, as is usual for him and any modern Republican, all in the hope of trying to distract from the fact that he is named in unsealed Epstein court documents and was documented partying with Epstein at several points across nearly 30 years before his death.

Experts like UC Berkeley’s Hany Farid, who spoke to Wired, are ringing alarm bells. He says the edited nature of the footage compromises the chain of custody, aka the legal process ensuring evidence hasn’t been tampered with. He explained that if you really want to do all this with trust and transparency, you can’t trust anyone who is handing you the files. “Do a direct export from the original system,” he told Wired. “No monkey business.”

And that’s the problem. So far, it’s been nothing but monkey business. Unfortunately, this is the monkey business administration, so you shouldn’t expect anything more. Actually, it’s probably better to expect much, much less.