Exclusive: Justice Department scrambling to find holiday volunteers to redact the Epstein files, internal DOJ email says
Source: CNN Politics
Updated Dec 23, 2025, 8:20 PM ET
PUBLISHED Dec 23, 2025, 8:09 PM ET
The Justice Department’s leadership asked career prosecutors in Florida to volunteer over the “next several days” to help redact the Epstein files, in the latest Trump administration push toward releasing the hundreds of thousands of photos, internal memos and other evidence around the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A supervising prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida’s US Attorney’s Office emailed the entire district office on Tuesday — two days before Christmas — announcing an “emergency request from the [Deputy Attorney General’s] office the SDFL must assist with,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by CNN. “We need AUSAs to do remote document review and redactions related to the Epstein files,” the email said.
The email raises the possibility of more Epstein files being released over the coming days, including the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. It also underlines the public and political backlash the Justice Department has faced since the deadline passed on Friday to release all documents in the federal government’s possession, as mandated by an act of Congress calling for transparency around Epstein files. The Justice Department acknowledged it had not gotten through redacting many of the files by Friday and has continued to release documents this week.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions from CNN about the email on Tuesday.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/23/politics/justice-department-redactions-review-epstein-files
This is a standard at many agencies (including the one I retired from) where you have "HOT!!" "HIGH PRIORITY!!111!!!!!" stuff that suddenly appears around holidays. I recall working one Christmas Eve on such an "emergency" (although got overtime pay for it).
After they gutted DOJ and then moved others into doing "ethnic cleansing" work with DHS, now they are scrambling.
And doing redactions requires a specific training. I had a coworker years ago, who was designated to do "eFOIA" (or as we pronounced it "Ee-foy-ah"
), which is the " (Electronic) Freedom of Information Act". The original Act was passed in 1966, was effective in 1967, and has been amended several times since. The redactions are done electronically with some software (Adobe Acrobat has the tool and various word processors do as well).
Apparently, some who have been doing this for DOJ, don't have the actual redaction software/tools, and thus their "finished product" isn't really "finished" (apparently can and has been "undone" ).
= new reply since forum marked as read
What's the number? 