Stephen Colbert’s Cold Open Mocks DOJ’s Missing Epstein Files With a Classic, If Unlikely, ‘Explanation’

Stephen Colbert trained his sights on the Justice Department on Wednesday night, opening The Late Show with a blistering parody of federal officials offering an “explanation” for the missing Jeffrey Epstein files – “a dog ate them!”

NPR reported Tuesday that internal FBI and Justice Department outline documents detail allegations from a woman who claimed that around 1983, when she was about 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to President Donald Trump. Records released last month show the FBI interviewed the woman four times, but only one of those interviews appears in the Justice Department’s public Epstein files database with 53-pages missing.

The Late Show’s cold open began with MS NOW Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist outlining renewed scrutiny over documents linked to Epstein before cutting to a mock DOJ political intermission offering what it called a “perfectly sound explanation.”

“We here at the Department of Justice have a perfectly sound explanation for the missing Epstein files. A dog ate them,” the faux spokesperson confidently declared.

The skit spiralled into escalating absurdity: “Yes, the DOJ was infiltrated by a DOJ. And this very bad boy seemed to only have an appetite for documents that mention the president.”

The spox continued, “In fact, he redacted so many of them with his mouth that he nearly” – cutting to real footage of Trump at a rally – “choked like a dog.”

Colbert’s mock DOJ added, “To be clear, no one has found evidence that the DOJ paid the dog to eat the Epstein files or this goat or this monkey or this full-time employee at the Department of Justice. Point is, the DOJ didn’t bury anything.”

“So, stop smearing our reputation,” he said, accompanied by a clip of a dog dragging its rear end across a carpet. “The DOJ’s Epstein files. Now available in bacon flavor.”

Watch above via CBS.

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