A federal judge has ordered a Thursday hearing in Katie Phang’s lawsuit seeking to force the Department of Justice to turn over Epstein-related documents it has withheld or redacted. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan wants the government to explain why it has not fully complied with his order.
The hearing is set for 1 p.m. EDT, putting the records fight on the court’s calendar now. Phang is asking for a release of documents on Jeffrey Epstein that the DOJ has kept back, and she has pressed the court to fine Todd Blanche $1,000 per day for each day the files are not turned over.
Sullivan said he privately reviewed the full documents before setting the hearing, then directed the government to answer outstanding issues that Blanche had not properly explained. He also ordered the DOJ to provide documentation showing that victims’ identities are being protected by the redactions, and he said the prior claims Blanche made “do not comply with the court’s order” to provide that proof.
The dispute goes beyond a simple yes-or-no over disclosure. The DOJ says some redactions are needed to protect victims’ identities and private email addresses, and it points to other logistical barriers to release. But Sullivan also ordered the government to explain why it cannot redact handwritten notes from an FBI interview with a witness making allegations against Donald Trump, and Blanche must give a timeline for a log of all the redactions in the Epstein files.
That log matters because the Epstein Files Transparency Act requires the government to produce one. Phang’s lawsuit asks the court to uncover names from eight emails spanning 2009 to 2018, including a 2013 message that said, “New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, 19yo,” a 2014 email that read, “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty,” and a 2015 message saying, “The key are the 14 to 15 year old girls—i am a sexual pervert because i say they are now of a reproductive age?”
Other entries in the filing include a 2018 email that said, “I found at least 3 very good young poor but we was so tired. I will cover up this week. Meet this one, not the beauty queen but we both likes her a lot.” In September 2018, an anonymous person told Epstein, “My favorite from Lithuania, [REDACTED], 19. Will meet when I am there.” The DOJ also argued that an email in which Epstein said, “I loved the torture video,” should stay redacted because the recipient was already identified in media reports as Emerati billionaire Sultan Ahmed b.
Sullivan’s order leaves the government with a simple task and a hard one. It must show, in the judge’s words, that the redactions are doing what the DOJ says they are doing, and it must do that in open court on Thursday. If it cannot, the next move could be a forced disclosure, or a sharper order than the one it has already ignored.
