‘Big beautiful cover-up’: The DoJ is editing released Epstein documents to redact Trump’s name, mentions drop from 900+ to 332

For an administration that keeps chanting transparency like a mantra, it keeps making too many shady moves lately. The DoJ is surrounded by scandals related to the release of Epstein documents, but their new, desperate attempts to cover up for Trump are the worst.

Over the past week, users digging through the Justice Department’s Epstein document portal noticed something strange. When the latest tranche first went live, a search for “Trump” returned more than 900 results. Check again after Christmas, and that number drops to 332. Same portal, same search bar, but radically different outcome.

Screenshots of the before-and-after results began circulating online almost immediately, with users accusing the U.S. Department of Justice of quietly editing already-released material. And it’s not them issuing corrections; they’re simply making names disappear. And not just any name. The name of Donald Trump.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ is permitted to redact victim-identifying information. This only includes names, images, and personal details that could retraumatize survivors. But it is strictly barred to selectively remove references to public figures before or after documents are made public.

Yet that’s exactly what the DoJ seems to be doing. And they thought they would never be caught. But a software doesn’t just “miscount” hundreds of search results overnight. Everyone knows that search indexes don’t casually lose two-thirds of their matches.

Social media users have exposed the DoJ’s Trump cover-up

In other words, either the documents were removed, the text was redacted, or the backend search parameters were changed. All of those require human intervention. Bluntly, this means someone at the DoJ touched the files after releasing them specifically to remove or redact Trump’s name. Social media users noticed this immediately.

Users accused the DoJ of breaking its own transparency rules to shield powerful figures. One post summed it up neatly: “Files about powerful people keep playing hide-and-seek—except this time the seekers are the ones hiding… Someone’s hitting delete while hoping we won’t notice the fingerprints.”

Users also called for independent audits of the database, pointing out that if the department is willing to quietly redact names today, there’s no reason to trust what remains visible tomorrow.

People are also disappointed and feel helpless that the administration is playing so casually with law and order. One wrote, “They are so getting away with everything it’s crazy, and it will continue. Sick and tired of him winning at everything, it’s making me sick.”