Judge gives Blanche deadline, warns of possible contempt charges over Epstein files

A federal judge gave Attorney General Todd Blanche a deadline to comply with court orders Wednesday regarding the release of certain information in the Epstein files, threatening contempt charges for failure to comply.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan stated in a Wednesday opinion that Blanche and his office were not following court orders concerning redactions in requested documentation related to the activities of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

He gave the Department of Justice (DOJ) until Sept. 24 to provide the records or explain to the court why its orders were not “clear and unambiguous” — finding the attorney general’s argument against the records’ release to be “without merit.”

Sullivan noted in his opinion that “a civil contempt finding at this juncture would be premature” but did not rule out the possibility if the deadline is not met.

The lawsuit was filed by attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, who alleged that the DOJ has violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) by withholding information.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward argued in July that the redactions in the files were allowed under the law as they contained the names of victims and private email addresses.

“One of the complicating aspects of administering the EFTA is that many communications written by victims, without context, can appear disturbing on their face,” Woodward wrote. “Consistent with that statutory authority, the Department has sought to prevent victim PII from becoming public even in instances where the victims eventually became complicit or engaged in reprehensible activity or communications.”

The court sided against the DOJ and ordered Blanche to “support his representation that the following redactions are the names of victims” — including correspondences with Epstein in files EFTA01187999 , EFTA02504630 and EFTA01022356 .

The ruling requires Blanche to release handwritten FBI interview notes and foreign language materials.

The DOJ argued that it could not release these files because “it was not practicable for a first-level reviewer to determine the responsiveness of a foreign language document,” which the court sided against.

“There are redactions that my lawsuit obviously says are illegal redactions or illegal withholdings,” Phang said in a video posted Wednesday.

“I can’t imagine that anybody would be satisfied that there’s still millions of documents that Todd Blanche says are duplicative or nonresponsive, and he won’t even turn them over to the people,” she continued.