The only reason I can think of for why someone would want to do this is to pass off fraudulent or AI generated images as real.
Other investigations into the files have found oddities like redaction of the word "don't" indicating a haphazard find-&-replace approach to redaction, possibly LLM-aided.
The DOJ/Akamai online hosted search feature is also incomplete - potentially due to some of these "digitally scanned" files not being subject to OCR.
Possibly but I don't find it compelling, if only because a significant portion of the media reportage on the files has made claims that are entirely baseless - if there were a narrative to be sold one would expect such reportage to be actively leveraging such fraudulent images.