Attorney General Todd Blanche “has only himself to blame” for having little time to fight a Jeffrey Epstein files order he ignored for months, a journalist’s lawyers argued.
Lawyers for Katie Phang, a journalist suing Blanche to force the Justice Department to fully obey the Epstein Files Transparency Act, made the argument in a court filing Monday.
The dispute centers on an order from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan requiring Blanche to start reviewing Epstein files written in foreign languages by Thursday.
Blanche asked Sullivan on Friday to pause that deadline while he appeals the order, according to his motion.
“[O]nce a document is produced, it cannot be unproduced,” the Justice Department argued.
Blanche filed the request “at 8:46 p.m. on Friday” and demanded a ruling by 5 p.m. Monday without first contacting Phang’s legal team, as court rules require, her lawyers wrote. Two of her three attorneys were observing Yom Kippur, which fell on Sunday and Monday, they added.
“While occasional procedural missteps are inevitable in civil litigation, Defendant is the Attorney General of the United States,” the attorneys wrote. “His disregard for local rules and professional norms was particularly inappropriate here.”
Sullivan first ordered the review in June, after the department told Congress that reviewing foreign-language records was not practical, according to his Sept. 16 order. Blanche let the original July 2 deadline pass without starting it.
“With less than 72 hours’ notice, Defendant Attorney General Blanche asks this Court to stay his deadline to comply with obligations that Defendant has already flouted for nearly three months,” Phang’s lawyers wrote.
The lawyers said Blanche waited 85 days after the June order to seek a pause, calling the request “egregiously late.”
“To the extent that the Attorney General now faces an imminent burden to comply with the law, and lacks adequate time to appeal, he has only himself to blame,” they argued.
The filing also says the appeal itself is improper because last week’s order only reset a deadline Blanche has faced since June. It is his second appeal in the case, and Phang’s lawyers say he is using it to raise arguments he failed to make earlier.
“The Attorney General is a sophisticated litigant,” Phang’s lawyers wrote. “He should not be permitted to appeal an unappealable enforcement order simply to shoehorn in arguments he should have made when he had the chance.”
The lawyers also said Blanche has told the court that the Freedom of Information Act, the main public records law, is the only proper route to the Epstein files. People who request the files under that law are told the opposite, the filing says, and Blanche never responded when Sullivan demanded an explanation.
“[T]he Attorney General is saying different things to different people,” the lawyers wrote.
“Defendant cites no authority for the proposition that administrative inconvenience excuses him from meeting his statutory obligations,” Sullivan wrote last week, rejecting the department’s reason for skipping the records.
In a separate ruling the same day, Sullivan found that Blanche had missed his June 26 deadline to formally respond to Phang’s lawsuit, and he barred him from filing a late request to throw the case out.
Sullivan had already warned Blanche’s lawyers at an Aug. 13 hearing, when he recounted a 2009 case in which he held Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court, USA Today reported.
“I’m not interested in doing that at all,” Sullivan said at the hearing. “But I will do it to make sure justice is administered fairly. That’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”
In last week’s order, Sullivan wrote that a contempt finding would be premature for now. He gave Blanche until Monday to seek clarification if he found the order unclear, and Blanche filed his request for a pause on Friday.
The fight also reaches President Donald Trump, whom Blanche defended against criminal charges before joining the Justice Department.
Last week’s order also requires Blanche to give Sullivan handwritten FBI notes from interviews with a woman who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, Law Commentary reported. Blanche’s pause request does not cover those notes, and his motion says the department is preparing them for the judge. His appeal covers the entire order, according to his notice of appeal.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the woman’s claims “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence,” CNN reported.
In May, while settling Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Blanche signed an agreement shielding Trump, his family and their companies from pending federal tax claims. In July, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami found that Trump filed that lawsuit “for an improper purpose,” seeking the appearance of “judicial legitimacy” for a deal with a Justice Department he effectively controls.
Blanche’s reply to Phang’s filing is due at 5 p.m. Monday under a schedule Sullivan set Saturday.
If Sullivan has not ruled by then, the Justice Department says it will ask a federal appeals court to pause the order before Thursday’s deadline.
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