The Department of Justice apparently thought that placing black rectangles over sensitive documents constituted state-of-the-art censorship, because it turned out that the only thing standing between the average Joe reading the blacked-out Jeffrey Epstein files was access to a computer with Microsoft Word installed. The release of the Epstein files was a disaster from the get-go. After months of foot-dragging and a legally mandated deadline — one that Congress had to force through with rare bipartisan pressure — the Trump administration finally coughed up a massive trove of documents. There was only one catch. Hundreds of pages were fully blacked out, and whole sections were buried beneath dark boxes, with names and details and potentially incriminating information all scrubbed from public view. The DOJ’s official line was protecting victims, even though they conveniently removed certain photos and documents featuring President Trump after just a few days. To put the final nail in the coffin of federal competence, users quickly discovered that the DOJ hadn’t actually redacted anything. They’d just scribbled over the text with the digital equivalent of a black highlighter. Open the document, highlight the censored section, paste it into a word processor, and congratulations: you’ve just defeated the full weight of the United States Justice Department with a keyboard shortcut. They’re not sending their smartest But here’s where the comedy ends and the horror begins. What’s spilling out from beneath those digital band-aids is proving to be more than sickening. Per a report from The Guardian, Epstein and his assistants didn’t just abuse children, but created a whole system that allowed him to prey on dozens and dozens of teenagers over two decades. One police report from 2001 describes Epstein’s assistant Ghislaine Maxwell prowling a Palm Beach college campus and telling female students that she needed “young, beautiful unmarried women” for office work. Girls who took the bait later reported overhearing phone calls about men scheduling drop-offs of “particular girls.” Maxwell alleged that she required a deep bench of recruits because the demand was “unpredictable.” FBI notes from 2019 capture what apparently qualified as a supply chain in Epstein’s despicable world. The shorthand reads like a twisted shopping list, including keywords like “Big Brazilian group” and “running out of girls.” Once, someone witnessed the perpetrator “asking for ID to make sure under 18 b/c he wasn’t believing them b/c [redacted] messed up by bringing more older girls.” His standing instructions to those who knew him? “You know what I like.” The witness understood this to mean minors. The documents also reference co-conspirators the feds were tracking, including someone identified as “Brunel.” That would be Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent who allegedly funneled teenagers to Epstein. French authorities grabbed him at a Paris airport in 2020 on suspicion of rape, sexual assault of minors, and trafficking. He turned up dead in his cell two years later, and the officials called it suicide. Meanwhile, the DOJ would like everyone to calm down. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently claimed that “there has been lots of sensationalism and even outright lies these past few days about the ‘Epstein Files.'” Bold words from an agency that got outmaneuvered by copy-paste. Epstein built his empire on a simple bet: that wealth and powerful friends would shield him from the consequences of his heinous actions. Six years after his suspicious death, the institutions supposedly dedicated to exposing the truth are still doing his work for him.