U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is presiding over a lawsuit brought by independent journalist Katie Phang against Todd Blanche’s Justice Department — a case built directly on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law Congress passed specifically to force disclosure of the Epstein investigation files. This isn’t a case where the DOJ disputes the underlying law. Sullivan’s own order states it plainly: “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
THE PATTERN, MONTH BY MONTH
This has now played out across a slow-motion sequence, each stage following the same shape: Sullivan orders disclosure or an explanation, the deadline passes, the DOJ offers a justification Sullivan finds insufficient, and a new hearing gets scheduled.
In late June, Sullivan issued a 48-page opinion finding Phang likely to prevail on the merits and gave the DOJ until July 2 to either release unredacted versions of specific documents — eight emails with senders or recipients blacked out, a draft indictment with co-conspirators’ names obscured, a 2019 email referencing other co-conspirators — or explain precisely why it couldn’t. He also ordered the department to produce a complete log of every redaction made across the entire released file set, as the law itself requires. Phang’s attorney, Brendan Ballou, described the win directly: “The government thought that it could ignore its own law and blow off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich. It didn’t work.” The DOJ’s own response, through a spokesperson: “The Acting Attorney General has not conceded anything. Judge Sullivan’s perverse interpretation appears to be focused on driving misleading headlines.” The department said it planned to appeal rather than comply.
By early July, the DOJ had formally declined to turn over the additional materials, arguing its original redactions were appropriate — directly contesting Sullivan’s finding that the department had already conceded a violation.
THE PART THAT MATTERS MOST: THEY MISSED THEIR OWN DEADLINE
A week ago, the case took a sharper turn. The DOJ missed its deadline to formally answer Phang’s complaint altogether, forcing her legal team to ask the court to compel a response. The department then requested a retroactive extension — filed, notably, by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the same figure already documented in this newsletter’s coverage of the wrongfully charged Reflecting Pool case. Sullivan’s response wasn’t satisfied silence — it was a new order identifying three specific areas where the DOJ still hadn’t complied with his prior rulings, and scheduling today’s hearing to address them directly.
TODAY’S HEARING: STILL NO DOCUMENTATION
At today’s hearing, Sullivan is pressing DOJ lawyers on specific, concrete failures. Most pointedly: the department claimed certain names were redacted because “lawyers for victims or potential victims” had requested that treatment — but when Sullivan explicitly ordered the DOJ to produce documentation proving those requests actually happened, the department simply didn’t provide it. Not a redacted version. Not a summary. Nothing.
Separately, Sullivan is pressing on the department’s decision to withhold handwritten interview notes tied to a woman who made unsubstantiated allegations against Trump — allegations Trump denies. The DOJ’s stated justification is that the notes are “substantially similar to” FBI reports of the same interviews that have already been publicly released, and that releasing the notes risks exposing victim information. Sullivan’s own reading of the statute directly undercuts that argument: the Epstein Files Transparency Act contains no exception for documents being “substantially similar” or duplicative to something already released — and the DOJ has, in fact, released similar duplicate-style materials elsewhere in this same document set, undermining its own consistency. Sullivan has specifically ordered the department to explain why the notes can’t simply be redacted by hand to protect victim information, rather than withheld in full — a far less drastic option the DOJ hasn’t accounted for.
WHY THIS ISN’T JUST A PROCEDURAL STORY
Step back from the individual redaction fights and the pattern itself is the story: a law passed by Congress specifically to force transparency on the Epstein investigation, a federal judge who has already found the government in violation of that law, and a Justice Department under Todd Blanche that has responded not by complying, but by missing deadlines, offering justifications the judge finds legally unsupported, and characterizing the judge’s own rulings as “perverse” rather than correcting course. This fits the exact pattern already documented in this newsletter’s coverage of Blanche’s OLC memo expanding executive privilege to cover private citizens — a Justice Department consistently choosing to fight transparency obligations in court rather than simply meet them, on a case specifically about the Epstein files, where public trust in “full transparency” promises has already been tested and found wanting more than once.