A Justice Department attorney was rattled during a hearing this week after federal Judge Emmet Sullivan asked for an update on an order related to a trove of foreign-language documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, former MSNBC host and attorney Katie Phang reported Saturday.
Phang sued Attorney General Todd Blanche in April, arguing the Justice Department (DOJ) failed to fully comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, among the few Epstein files-related lawsuits to gain traction. She won a preliminary injunction in June ordering the DOJ to unredact key documents.
In a hearing earlier this week in Washington, D.C., DOJ attorney Andrew Block was asked for an update by Sullivan on the progress of his order from June to “immediately initiate review and production” of select Epstein-related documents.
Reporting on the hearing, Phang described Block’s reaction to Sullivan’s question: “Turning red, stammering, hemming and hawing, and eventually failing to answer the Court thereby confirming what we all suspected, which was the DOJ has not even begun the process of translating and reviewing the foreign-language documents.”
Sullivan pressed Block for specifics, asking the DOJ attorney “how many pages” his agency had left to review and produce for public viewing.
“I don’t have a number,” Block responded, according to Phang.
“But you knew this was going to be discussed today. You’re at the podium as counsel for the Attorney General,” Sullivan responded.
According to Phang, Block told Sullivan that the DOJ’s position “hasn’t changed,” to which Sullivan fired back: “The Government’s position then is you’re just not going to comply [with my court order]?”
In a write-up of the hearing, Phang expressed her shock over the DOJ’s open defiance in the face of an order from a federal judge.
“On June 26, 2026, Judge Sullivan entered an order granting my Motion for Preliminary Injunction, directing Todd Blanche to ‘immediately initiate review and production of foreign-language materials that may be subject to production under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,’” Phang wrote.
“As of today, August 15, 2026, that hasn’t happened. And consider that language as compared to some of the other areas of that preliminary injunction order: the court didn’t give Blanche an ‘out’ to explain why he couldn’t do the translations; the court ordered him to ‘immediately initiate review and production.’”
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