The Department of Justice has begged prosecutors to spend their Christmas redacting the Epstein Files as they continue to release files over the festive period.
A report by CNN revealed that DOJ leadership at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida asked its entire staff on Tuesday—two days before Christmas—for volunteers to conduct “remote document review and redactions related to the Epstein files” over the next several days.
“I am aware that the timing could not be worse,” the DOJ told staff in an internal email on Tuesday. “For some, the holidays are about to begin, but I know that for others, the holidays are coming to an end.”
“We have an obligation to the public to release these documents, and before we can do so, certain redactions must be made to protect the identity of the victims, among other things,” they added.
The plea comes following the administration’s failure to meet last Friday’s statutory deadline to release the remaining 700,000 Epstein-related files currently in the government’s possession. Hundreds of DOJ lawyers have been working on redacting the files over the past month, after inheriting the project from the FBI.
Around 30,000 heavily redacted files were released on Friday, with an additional batch of 11,000 documents made available on Monday in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The blacked-out files, which Epstein survivors have criticized for their “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation,” have been accused of being overly-censored in order to protect President Trump and his allies from being implicated in the scandal.
However, amateur sleuths found a loophole in the DOJ’s redactions on Monday that allowed them to uncensor the files in Photoshop, revealing over 600 mentions of Trump’s name.
“So apparently there are many Epstein files on the DOJ website where you can highlight the redacted text, copy it, and paste it onto another document to read the redactions,” said X user Liam Nissan in a post revealing the workaround.
Political commentator Ed Krassenstein also released a video showing how to unredact the Epstein Files with shockingly little effort.
“Trump DOJ screwed up some of the redactions so bad that you can recover them,” he said. “And I did so simply by copying and pasting the text.”
Other errors made by the administration in their bungling of the files include accidentally releasing a batch of documents early on Monday, leading to accusations of a cover-up after they were briefly taken offline.
Donald Trump has never been formally accused by law enforcement of wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, and has denied any allegations made against him, Axios reports.
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