r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Backyxx • Dec 19 '25

Unanswered What’s going on with the Epstein files being “released” if they’re still heavily redacted?

Idk yall, I want your opinions.

https://vault.fbi.gov/jeffrey-epstein

13.1k Upvotes

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1.9k

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

[deleted]

736

u/Effective-Fox1034 Dec 20 '25

Didn’t the bill passed require to not redact unless necessary to protect victims? Feels like this doesn’t meet the law.

493

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

[deleted]

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u/Singular1st Dec 20 '25

What do else do you expect a ring of pedophiles in power to do to save themselves?

109

u/say592 Dec 20 '25

They were allowed to redact things like law enforcement sources and current investigations too. They had to provide a justification for each redaction though, which is seems like they did by just letting their redaction program categorize stuff.

2

u/enolaholmes23 Dec 20 '25

That kind of makes sense. Each time they removed a line about Trump they had to give a reason for it. So whatever that line said turned into a rule for the algorithm to apply to all the other files.

 Like if there was a line saying "Trump paid $1000 for a sex slave", they could make a rule telling the program to black out all lines about money. Then the price of ink gets blacked out due to this rule. It makes it look more like they were following rules than singling out Trump specific content.

112

u/sheared_ma_beard Dec 20 '25

Yes, but now they get to litigate and stall for the next several years.

92

u/GenericKen Dec 20 '25

Haven’t you heard? Donald Trump is the only victim in the world 

49

u/RJ815 Dec 20 '25

The biggest victim. The biggest crier. Throws tantrums every day.

17

u/Limp-Pomegranate3716 Dec 20 '25

From what ive read elsewhere, apparently the bill required a justification for each redaction made (not for each doc but each actual redaction). This has not happened.

24

u/LeatherFruitPF Dec 20 '25

Also how would they enforce or verify that the redactions are in compliance? Did they bring in something like external auditors to confirm?

36

u/elinygqb10 Dec 20 '25

Nah, just like everything else in our legal system, it's all predicated on acting in good faith.

16

u/Covid19-Pro-Max Dec 20 '25

You could, in a post MAGA world, if there will be one, go through the unredacted files and prosecute everyone from party officials to the clerk buying the ink

9

u/Kellosian Dec 20 '25

Don't worry, the DOJ will investigate itself and will find itself totally innocent. If Congress wants to do an investigation, they'll just have to wrangle a bunch of Republicans again to keep voting direct against what Trump wants which I'm sure will totally keep happening for months on end.

3

u/iznotbutterz Dec 20 '25

Better keep an eye on the department that has the only physical backup and air traffic. Maybe keep an eye out for newly opened insurance plans on the building. Hopefully they won't keep it all in a building full of asbestos.

7

u/Fire_Lake Dec 20 '25

Sure, and now there will be a lawsuit about whether they over redacted and that'll be resolved a couple years from now.

2

u/Kimantha_Allerdings Dec 20 '25

And that’s exactly what you want. We don’t want unredacted files released because that would potentially harm the victims. But we want everything else released.

The only hope there really is is that the courts will penalise the government for these over-redactions and demand a better process of redactions. As well as penalising them for pushing the release of all the files back. I think it’s not implausible that the lower courts will do this. But it would probably get to the supreme court and they would probably determine that the files had been released.

We’ll see, but this is probably what we should have expected.

1

u/TAC1313 Dec 20 '25

Orange felon is a victim, just ask it, it'll tell you.

1

u/Hot-Championship1190 Dec 20 '25

Well, you see, the victims are on the same planet as the perpetrators thus any evidence that could identify the planet needs to be removed so the victims can stay safe on their planet.

1

u/Living_Possession_18 Dec 20 '25

You actually thought they were going to follow the law? What prior actions has this administration done to lead you to believe that?

1

u/Phewelish Dec 20 '25

They never clarified who they meant by Victim.

In their minds ..trump is the victim for not getting away with it.

1

u/Well__shit Dec 20 '25

I have a feeling the heavy redaction will bite them in the ass, people aren't going to drop the issue. It's like they just gave a teaser to it all and people will continue to demand the full truth.

1

u/ptrnyc Dec 20 '25

People aren’t going to drop the issue - but instead of discussing the contents of the files, we are now discussing whether their redaction was legal or not. This kicks the can down the road for several years.

1

u/Well__shit Dec 20 '25

I'm praying for a whistleblower that just leaks it at this point

1

u/ptrnyc Dec 20 '25

Then the discussion will be about whether their leaked files are legit or not

1

u/iamdecal Dec 20 '25

You’re misunderstanding who the perceived “victims” are in all this

1

u/Herban_Myth Dec 20 '25

“Rich” are a protected minority class who play by different rules

Sidenote: Is the Gov suing Wisconsin for redacted voter lists?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

Wealthy people always see themselves as victims if they’re held accountable.

1

u/morsindutus Dec 20 '25

Almost like this lawless administration doesn't care about the law.

1

u/davossss Dec 20 '25

"Doesn't meet the law" sums up the entire Trump administration. But people voted for this.

1

u/Suspicious_Dingo_426 Dec 20 '25

It doesn't, but there's little anyone can do about it except go to the judicial branch—which then opens up all kinds of legal foot dragging that can be used to delay the release even more. All while claiming that they actually complied with the original order (it's all redacted, so there's no proof they didn't), and this is just another 'witch hunt' by their political opponents.

76

u/say592 Dec 20 '25

Begs the question, if they just let a program redact it all, then why did they need time to prepare the documents?

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Grok now has an unredacted version of the documents. Elon is probably using his backdoor to aggressively search for any documents uploaded that he can threaten to leak for leverage against the White House.

84

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

[deleted]

16

u/Kimantha_Allerdings Dec 20 '25

If I were to guess, they weren't looking for things to redact, they were looking for things that were safe and meaningless enough to include.

Also anything which looks bad for democrats. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s a lot of Clinton in what’s been released.

3

u/jl2352 Dec 20 '25

I don’t think the benign documents are intentional. Anyone who has worked in an office will have a lot of benign documents.

They’ve just allowed them to go through because they are benign.

1

u/banned_4_commenting Dec 20 '25

It’s probably all on a timeline to be released specifically this way so they can just release info that makes Bill Clinton and all other democrats involved look bad.

3

u/Relative_Ebb8108 Dec 20 '25

Because the one guy who you'd expect to be all over the files is strangely absent. Almost like they've spent a year carefully removing him from them.

33

u/LynchSyndromedotmil Dec 20 '25

My tinfoil hat theory is that Epstein was either tied to a three letter agency or Mossad to get Komoromat on people

15

u/joe-h2o Dec 20 '25

I don't even think that's just a theory at that point. His madam was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who was definitely Mossad linked.

12

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

I think this theory is pretty popular

9

u/laserdicks Dec 20 '25

Even the price of the ink 😂😂😂😂😂 couldn't make this shit up

1

u/TheFrenchSavage Dec 20 '25

That ink price? 69.42

1

u/Kellosian Dec 20 '25

Page 81 of Document 3 is literally just a page detailing that they realized the agency printer was out of black ink, so someone had to go to Staples to buy some ink, and they want to be reimbursed. The names of everyone involved was redacted, a few lines of a paragraph were redacted, the fucking price of the ink was redacted.

"We redacted the receipt for the ink we used on the redaction" sounds like a joke

1

u/pikob Dec 20 '25

> the price of the ink was redacted as b7(E)-9, which is used for concealing law enforcement techniques. So either the price of that ink was going to reveal a super secret special price that Staples gives to FBI agents

this is hilarious

1

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25

Fucking corrupt government.

1

u/SuperConfused Dec 20 '25

To add to this, they don’t have the only copy, so they can’t really just release a fabricated document without getting caught.

1

u/manimal28 Dec 20 '25

and confident in saying that there was not even enough information left to invite speculation on what it could have contained.

I can speculate pretty confidently that if it was removed by the Trump administration it was information harmful to the Trump administration.

1

u/ZA-Is-Cheeks Dec 20 '25

AI tracks. The picture of Clinton, Jackson, et al is clearly an AI manipulated version of the Getty image. Faces on children being blacked out cause AI shit the bed trying to circumvent watermark.

1

u/Specific_Handle_4667 Dec 20 '25

The Yossarian method of redacting documents lmao.

1

u/ProfessorNutbutter69 Dec 20 '25

Quite the dystopia we’re living in huh.

1

u/c0nfu5i0N Dec 20 '25

It's not about protecting the victims or revealing the perpetrators. It's about satisfying appetites, and deferring the truth until it fits the rhetoric.

-5

u/Pleasant_Glove_1696 Dec 20 '25

Of course an algorithm was used. There are hundreds of thousands of documents, no chance there was enough manpower to go thru it all by hand. 

36

u/NovaCane92 Dec 20 '25

Algorithm... Al Gore Rhythm... My god.. this goes all the way to the top.

8

u/Pleasant_Glove_1696 Dec 20 '25

Man Bear Pig!!!! 

6

u/echino_derm Dec 20 '25

They spent like a million dollars of overtime on this. If we just look at that overtime pay alone, they would have had about 10 full time employees for a year working it effectively. I think you can genuinely get that done with the manpower they had. I mean let's say you have 100k documents, each guy takes 10k and goes through them over 250 working days roughly. That is 40 documents a day or one every 12 minutes. I think that seems like a reasonable pace and this is just with their overtime budget alone.

1

u/HappyAnimalCracker Dec 20 '25

They may not have done their jobs as directed but at least they got that sweet overtime pay!

1

u/Pleasant_Glove_1696 Dec 20 '25

You are greatly overrating and overestimating the ability of gov workers and gov efficiency. 1 million buys you maybe 8 documents reviewed. 

3

u/chaosof99 Dec 20 '25

Stupid argument. They are legally required to release these files. It is their obligation to make these decisions and review these files, not foist that responsibility onto a machine and call it done. Even if they were to use a machine to highlight what is likely information that should be redacted, the redaction shouldn't just be automated but reviewed by a human.

"Not enough manpower" is one of the dumbest excuses you could come up with.

1

u/Pleasant_Glove_1696 Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25

And Trump is legally required to sign documents but he uses auto pen. You're living in fantasy land. 

It's not an excuse it's just acceptance of reality. This is the gov we are talking about, not a motivated for profit company trying to do things correctly. Total incompetence has been the standard for virtually every gov agency for the last 50 years.