As the Department of Justice is overburdened with reviewing and releasing the Epstein files, the White House has stepped in to ease some pressure. According to a report by Axios, the Trump administration has taken control of the X account of the Justice Department.

The news comes just a day after the DOJ released 30,000 new documents, sparking widespread reaction on social media as Donald Trump’s name appeared several times in the files. What drew attention was a letter written by Jeffrey Epstein alleging inappropriate claims about underage girls and President Trump. 

Controversy erupted, and people started criticizing Trump heavily. The Department of Justice’s X account, reportedly being managed by the White House, then attempted to contain the fallout and stated that the letter was fake.

It was dated after Epstein’s death and was processed by a Virginia mail room, while the convicted s– offender was locked up in a New York prison. To clarify the fraudulent origin of the document and protect Trump’s image, the DOJ’s X page replied to multiple accounts that posted about the letter.

The department wrote, “The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail and flagged for the FBI at the time.”

Highlighting why the letter was deemed fake, the DOJ detailed, “The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s. The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death, out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York. The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.”

Social media users were shocked to see that the Justice Department was issuing a clarification to even entertainment pages like Pop Base on X. As people pondered over the aggressive damage control approach of the DOJ, reports came out that the Trump administration was handling the account.

However, the efforts led to more damage as social media users started calling out the DOJ for releasing fake Epstein letters without properly reviewing them. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche then came up with another statement, explaining that even fake documents are required to be released as per the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Blanche posted, “We produce documents, and sometimes this can result in releasing fake or false documents because they are simply in our possession, because the law requires this. Case in point: the so-called Epstein Nassar letter is clearly FAKE.”

Nevertheless, there is still a long road ahead for the DOJ as some 700,000 documents still await review, even though the deadline for releasing all the files was December 19. The department has so far declassified only a small portion of the files in two batches and plans to drop the remaining records in the coming weeks.