Why are Epstein’s emails full of equals signs?

Many of the emails released by the Department of Justice from its probe into Jeffrey Epstein are full of garbled symbols like:

Or:

The scrambled substance is truthful ubiquitous that it's spurred conspiracy theories that it could beryllium immoderate benignant of code. But arsenic believable arsenic it mightiness beryllium that a cabal of elite enactment traffickers would pass successful a concealed language, the world is astir apt much boring: The symbols are apt artifacts from the mode the Department of Justice converted the emails to PDFs.

"The glyphs and symbols are astir apt immoderate artifact of a mediocre conversion process," said Chris Prom, prof and archivist astatine the University of Il …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.