I Have the *Entire* FBI Drop that Just Dropped - Here's a Taste, with Much, *Much* More to Come

by Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - attorney, law professor emeritus, and author of Federal law

On Friday evening, in response to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests from Bloomberg's Jason Leopold, the FBI very quietly dropped 8 files. Of course I grabbed them immediately to store away safely on our private dropbox.

NOTE! I will be going live about it at 2pm Eastern / 11 Pacific here: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/322965

This post will be short (because again, I'm going live, and it's Sunday, dammit!) But I promise it will be interesting.

The eight files range in page numbers from the low double-digits to a whopping 272 pages, for a total of 715 pages. So I've not had time to fine-tooth comb them all, however even a brief skimming shows that they are going to be very interesting, in places disappointing, and in other places illuminating.

What I'm going to share with you right now is just one such thing for you to peruse while I start digging into them more (and have I mentioned that it's Sunday, dammit?)

Contained within one of the files I found the actual redacting guidelines used by the FBI (and I would hazard a guess that they are very similar, or maybe even identical, for the DOJ, although it's only an educated guess).

*Note: I have printed the "how to redact" section out as its own file and included it for Notes from the Front members.

In this we learn that they are using Adobe Acrobat 2020. That in and of itself isn't terribly interesting, and we knew they were using Adobe, although not necessarily which version.

Here's what's interesting:

The instructions about *importing* a particular file.

The first very interesting thing is this:

1. Select 'Import'
2. Select the file Epstein_Search_Terms.txt

This is interesting, and perhaps alarming, for a couple of reasons. First, it tells us how they went about redacting, and likely *why* there have been both over- and under-redactions, which is what those of you who have followed me for a while know that I theorized: they have a file full of names which are to be redacted, which they import and then basically do the redaction version of 'search and replace'.

And the name of that file full of names is "Epstein_Search_Terms.txt".

Which brings us to the second interesting - and perhaps alarming, thing:

IT'S A FREAKING .TXT FILE!!!

The *most* tamperable type of file there is!

The most *copyable* type of file there is!

Now it's entirely possible that the FBI sysadmins are clueful enough to know how to set read/write access on a text file (chmod, anyone?), but I wouldn't want to stake my life on it. Or the lives of the victims whose names *are contained in that plain text file*!

Anyways, the full "How to Redact and What to Look For" pdf that I have for Notes from the Front members is 17 pages.

It's a tip of the iceberg in these files but I wanted to give you something while I go through these massive files (again, over 700 pages in total).

And, again, I'm doing a live broadcast about the files at 2pm Eastern (so in just about an hour) here:

https://open.substack.com/live-stream/322965

Notes from the Front members: the FBI "How to Redact" instructions that I printed out just for you from a larger file of assorted FBI documents, emails, and more, is in your inbox now. (Note: if you have installed the Substack app on your phone you need to be sure to go to your notifications settings *in the app*, and set notifications to "email" because it defaults your account to "not email").

My investigating, fact-gathering, and reporting is 100% reader-supported. Here are ways that you can support my reporting:

- Join Notes from the Front: It's just $5 a month, and you will truly be supporting what I do here, plus you get the documents that I include with each post. You can do that below where it says “Upgrade”.

- Support my coffee habit here: https://www.annepmitchell.com/buy-anne-a-coffee/

- Share this post

P.S. If you actually read all the way to the bottom please leave a sentence in a comment that includes the word "Sunday". It will show me that my efforts aren't in vain and that people actually *do* read these things, and it will drive those who just skim crazy wondering just why everyone is talking about Sunday! ;~)

(The above was provided by me, Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - attorney and law professor emeritus; no AI here, the buck stops here.)