Epstein files: A reference to the nine-year-old

[teach1st]

I don't post many OPs, and my apologies if this has already been posted. In reference to Representative Raskin's mentioning a nine-year-old in the Epstein files, there's this. Notice the reference to multiple JPG pictures.

[jmbar2]

1. It is possible that could be an encoding thing

A number of instances of words with = symbols appear throughout the files. A knowledgable person on Reddit explains it this way:

The equal sign issue (=9yo vs 19yo)

This looks terrifying and the implications are huge but technically it’s one of the most explainable discrepancies.

What likely happened: • Emails were originally stored as plain text or HTML • During export to PDF, OCR and/or text normalization got involved • The equal sign (=) is a fragile character because it’s commonly used in email encoding

In email systems, = is often: • A soft line-break marker (quoted-printable encoding) • A continuation indicator • A formatting escape character

So if one pipeline preserved quoted-printable text and another decoded + flattened it, you can absolutely end up with =9 yo in one file and 19 yo in another — without any human “editing” happening.

THAT SAID The semantic impact is MASSIVE. We now have multiple public versions of the same document where: • A single character completely flips the meaning • There’s zero provenance or explanation attached

If I were building this search system, I’d call that a major process failure with serious consequences.

At the same time, I get why they didn’t “clean it up.” The volume is insane. Normalizing this first would be a monumental task (maybe eventually doable w/ AI), but then people would rightly complain the docs weren’t raw or original anymore. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

The real issue IMO is how this was released to the public with no explanation at all. We’re clearly not the only ones scratching our heads.

Bottom line: this looks like different ingestion / export / redaction workflows — not necessarily tampering. Exactly what you’d expect when one of the largest document dumps ever is pulled from different systems, processed by different tools, and published without normalization.

Technical_Ad2730

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1qu0sak/why_do_you_think_a_lot_of_the_epstein_emails_have/

[Prairie Gates]

2. ...

[vanessa_ca]

8. The explanation is plausible. I had your reaction for a split second,

Last edited Tue Feb 10, 2026, 01:35 AM - Edit history (1)

then I remembered I had personal experience with this.

[harumph]

3. That's testable if we know what software they're using.

We don't really know at this point - but would like to add - maybe it wasn't taken out so folks would jump on it and it could be proven to
be an OCR glitch - thus discrediting it. It's a old intelligence trick to pollute otherwise legitimate information
with information they know upon closer examination will be shown to be incorrect for one reason or another. Then
they'll say "See, how can you believe any of it?" And a lot of people will probably fall for such a gambit.

[jmbar2]

4. Here's the explanation from wikipedia

It's way over my head but maybe you can make sense of it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted-printable

Another person in that same thread says:

Outlook in particular can process text in multiple formats and encodings and switching between them can create all sorts of wierd artifacts.

Also
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44902985/random-html-email-characters-replaced-with-in-outlook

[AZJonnie]

5. Brave of you to question the dominant paradigm, that's often not appreciated in society

This analysis will likely turn out to be correct. Aside from the fact that it's accurate technically, the documents are RIFE with these sorts of encoding glitches across the board. Also, the likelihood that someone is going to refer a nine year old as a "new brazilian" seems significantly less likely than referring to a 19 yo with that verbiage. Obviously I'm no expert whatsoever but I would intuit that if you're so sick you're interested in 9 year old's, you probably really only care that they're nine years old, not their country of origin. But again, just guessing on that.

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2026/02/fact-check-doj-epstein-library-made-19yo-brazilian-into-9yo.html

There's actually 3 other copies of this email in the files that have been released, and the other 3 say 19yo.

[jmbar2]

7. Thanks for your thoughts

I did a lot of documentation in my prior career and had to deal with weird stuff when downloading and converting docs from different formats. I was reading some of the downloaded files and noticed lots of weird "typos" in all the files that suggested it might be data encoding issues.

The truth is bad enough. These errors show that the administration is struggling with dealing with such a large mass of files from different devices, applications, and eras in tech.

[AZJonnie]

11. NP. Ever since I got taken in REALLY badly by the LIHOP/MIHOP conspiracy theories in the early 2000's

And made a complete fool of myself, I've tried to train myself to be leery of "believing things because I want to believe them" without actually researching them. And things since then have gotten like 100x more 'clickbait'-y. Little snippets are taken and blown up, without providing full context, in order to sell the outrage and generate eyeballs.

Epstein is SUCH a cottage industry at this point, everything one reads should be closely scrutinized.

Like you did here

[stopdiggin]

10. the answer to your 'how this was released' question - is most likely right there in your own post

And that is - that despite some probable efforts on the part of 'some' people - the release is in large part a 'dump'. And, they knew it was ... But - if you 'clean it up' - people are going to scream blood murder that you have 'sanitized' ... "Demand entire!" "Delaying!" "Redacted!" And round and round we go.

In any event - thanks for your effort in providing some solid information, and possible explanation, on how this might have come about.

[lostnfound]

12. I'm relieved. Stomach has turned enough. Nt

[TommyT139]

6. The way to find out for sure

...could be to unredact the sender's email address, and access their email account.

[vanessa_ca]

9. And why scan them? Just screenshot the electronic copy. -eom