The Manafort Redaction Disaster

On January 8, 2019, lawyers for Paul Manafort—President Trump's former campaign chairman—filed a 10-page response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's allegations that Manafort had lied to investigators. Large portions of the document were blacked out, ostensibly protecting sensitive information.

Within hours, journalists at The Guardian, CNBC, and other outlets discovered something remarkable: the black boxes were just visual overlays. By simply highlighting the blacked-out text, copying it, and pasting it into a new document, anyone could read what Manafort's lawyers thought they had hidden.

What Was Revealed

The failed redaction disclosed explosive information that had never been made public:

• Manafort had shared Trump campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate the FBI believed had ties to Russian intelligence
• Manafort and Kilimnik had met in Madrid during the 2016 campaign
• They had discussed a "peace plan" for Ukraine that could involve sanctions relief for Russia
• Manafort had authorized someone to invoke his name to secure a meeting with President Trump

This was, as many commentators noted, the clearest public evidence to date of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian contacts. And it was revealed not through investigative journalism or court order, but through a basic PDF copy-paste.

How Did This Happen?

Analysis of the PDF structure suggests Manafort's lawyers used Adobe Acrobat's markup tools to draw black rectangles over the text. This is not the same as using Acrobat's redaction tools.

The difference is critical:

• Markup tools add visual elements on top of existing content. The underlying text remains in the document.
• Redaction tools permanently delete the underlying text and replace it with a visual placeholder.

Both produce documents that look identical. The black boxes appear in the same places. But one is secure, and the other is a security theater performance.

The Correct Process (That Was Skipped)

Adobe Acrobat Pro actually has proper redaction capabilities. The correct workflow is:

1. Go to Tools → Protect → Mark for Redaction
2. Select the text or areas to redact
3. Click "Apply Redactions" (this is the step that actually removes the data)
4. Save as a new file
5. Verify by attempting to copy-paste the redacted sections

Manafort's team appears to have skipped step 3—the most important step. They marked text for redaction but never applied the redaction. Or they used drawing tools instead of redaction tools altogether.

The Aftermath

The filing was quickly replaced with a properly redacted version, but the damage was done. The information was already in the public record, reported by every major news outlet, and being analyzed by legal experts worldwide.

Mueller's team, by contrast, had filed their own documents with proper redaction. When the Special Counsel's office redacted something, it stayed redacted.

"Redaction failures don't just happen in court filings. In 2014, the New York Times suffered a redaction failure embarrassment... As with other redaction failures in PDF documents, these failures were revealed when redacted portions were copied and pasted into a text document."
—Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr., American Bar Association

Lessons for Legal Professionals

The Manafort case became a teaching moment for the legal profession. Key takeaways:

1. Know Your Tools

There's a difference between drawing a black box and applying a redaction. If you don't understand this distinction, you shouldn't be handling sensitive documents.

2. Always Verify

Before filing any redacted document, test it. Try to copy-paste the redacted sections. Search for keywords that should have been removed. If the text appears, your redaction failed.

3. Consider Purpose-Built Software

Adobe Acrobat is a general-purpose PDF editor. Its redaction features are buried in menus and easy to use incorrectly. Software designed specifically for redaction makes these mistakes harder to make.

4. Flatten or Re-Render

If you're unsure whether your redaction worked, print the document to a new PDF or flatten it. This removes the underlying layer structure and bakes the visual representation into the file. But this should be a backup, not a primary strategy.

This Wasn't the First or Last

The Manafort case was high-profile, but redaction failures happen constantly:

• A federal judge's ruling in an Apple vs. Samsung patent case had "redacted" sections that anyone could copy-paste
• The FBI's prosecution documents in the Snowden case accidentally revealed his personal email address
• The European Commission's AstraZeneca vaccine contract was exposed through PDF bookmarks that weren't removed
• Meta's 2025 FTC trial filings exposed confidential competitor data from Apple, Google, and Snap

A 2011 study found thousands of improperly redacted documents in the federal court system. More than a decade later, the problem persists.

The Human Cost

Beyond the legal implications, redaction failures can expose victims, witnesses, and confidential sources. Failed redactions have revealed the identities of:

• Sexual assault victims
• Whistleblowers
• Undercover operatives
• Children in custody cases
• Witnesses in criminal proceedings

When a lawyer fails to properly redact a document, real people can be put at risk.