Judge Emmett Sullivan gave Attorney General Todd Blanche ten days to explain, in a sworn declaration, why the Justice Department still hasn’t produced the Epstein documents the court ordered released — then closed the hearing with a story about the one prosecutor he ever held in contempt, case citation included, so Blanche’s lawyers could look up how that ended.
Thursday’s Fivestack convened minutes after the hearing ended. Zev, Dean Blundell, attorney Anne P. Mitchell and Ellie Leonard of The Panicked Writer had all listened in live — and Zev read the hearing’s defining exchange straight from the transcript. It deserves to run in full:
THE COURT: Give me a date. I’m willing to work with you. Give me a date when this can be accomplished.
DOJ: I don’t have a date … it’s a little bit out of my control.
THE COURT: But you knew this was going to be discussed today, though.
DOJ: I’m not able to give you a date because, quite honestly, that date is out of my control.
THE COURT: You can’t give the court a time frame — 30 days, 60 days, whatever?
DOJ: I’m not able to, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Is there someone at the Department of Justice who can do that? … Pass the microphone to that person.
DOJ: It is forthcoming.
THE COURT: This much is forthcoming. Let’s be realistic … the public demands the time frame, not just me.
The department that indexed millions of pages in weeks cannot name a month.
The date fight was about the Epstein Files Transparency Act’s plainest requirement: every redaction gets a written justification, published in the Federal Register. Seven months after Sullivan’s injunction, the department has published none.
The day’s other fight was 37 pages of handwritten FBI notes — the agents’ original interview notes underlying the typed 302 reports in the Jane Doe 4 case. The department withheld them as “duplicative.” Sullivan wanted proof:
THE COURT: Just to take us at face value that the notes are substantially similar doesn’t really address it … All I need is proof … I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just trying to do my job.
DOJ: I guess — is that an order?
“When a lawyer asks if that’s an order, it’s because if it’s an order, they can appeal it,” Mitchell said.
Leonard walked through the department’s logic until it fell over. “It’s duplicative — but also it’s under seal. Which doesn’t make any sense, because if it’s copies of stuff we already have, it wouldn’t be under seal,” she said. The department also argued handwriting is too hard to redact. “This is 37 pages. We could redact it before lunch,” Leonard said. This is the same review team that redacted “Lion King” from a released document because King is somebody’s name.
Then there are the files nobody has ever sees. “They left everything out of the files that wasn’t in English,” Leonard said. “That leaves out anything Russian. That leaves out the bank accounts.” The FBI employs linguists. An iPhone translates. The excuse doesn’t survive contact with a phone.
Mitchell compared a DOJ-redacted email Epstein sent himself against the unredacted original she already held: 30 names blacked out, and not one belongs to a victim. “The point isn’t who the names are. The point is the DOJ illegally redacted them,” Mitchell said. One name escaped the redaction team entirely — Epstein had spelled it “Donaldo Trupp.”
Why no contempt today, then? Mitchell, the panel’s lawyer, laid out the mechanics: contempt is a judge’s last resort, and Sullivan spent the day appeal-proofing it. A 15-minute recess stretched to nearly an hour while he skimmed the new binder Blanche’s team handed up — documents the plaintiff, in this unusual case, has never seen. Then he returned, told his contempt story, and put the citation on the record. “Judges don’t care if you appeal, because the trial still goes on,” Mitchell said.
Blanche will likely appeal the ten-day order. The department will keep moving the cups — Blundell called the whole performance “bullshit three-card monte.” But the delay is doing something the department didn’t intend. In six months, Jeffrey Epstein has moved from dead tabloid billionaire to Donald Trump’s intimately linked associate — in the public’s settled understanding, not on the conspiracy fringe. Every stall confirms it: an innocent department would have ended this by producing the files.
Blanche has ten days — and one case citation to read first.
Thank you Lev Parnas, Jim Bourg, Amy Gabrielle, LC - Silence is Complicity, Robin Payes, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. and Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.
