Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Justice Department turned over to a federal judge FBI notes in which a woman says President Donald Trump sexually abused her as a child after sex offender Jeffrey Epstein introduced them, under threat of sanctions.
The Justice Department said in a court filing Friday that it hand-delivered a binder of the notes to the chambers of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan shortly before 11 a.m., ahead of the noon deadline he set in an Oct. 9 order.
The binder contains FBI agents’ handwritten notes from three interviews, marked for redaction, for Sullivan to review privately, the filing said.
Journalist Katie Phang is suing Blanche under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a 2025 law requiring the government to release its Epstein files, according to Sullivan’s June ruling.
The woman alleged that the introduction came in the 1980s, when she was about 13, and that Trump “in turn assaulted her,” Phang’s lawyers wrote in papers quoted in the ruling.
In typed summaries of her FBI interviews that the department released in March, the woman described Trump attempting to force her into a sex act, CNN reported.
She told agents she bit him, and that he struck her and said “words to the effect of, ‘get this little b— the hell out of here.’”
“Completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in March, according to CNN, which called the allegations unverified. Leavitt also pointed to the woman’s criminal record, and Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing tied to Epstein.
Redacted versions of the notes “did not exist” when the department gave Sullivan unredacted copies on Sept. 24, the filing said, because the department had concluded the notes were duplicative of the typed reports.
“The underlying handwritten notes are not duplicates of the FD-302 interview reports,” Sullivan wrote in a Sept. 16 order, using the FBI’s name for the typed summaries.
“[T]his should not be taken as a representative sample of what could be done, or what would happen, if the Department were required to redact and produce handwritten notes on a larger scale,” the department wrote Friday.
The department also asked Sullivan to pause any order to release the notes so it could consider an appeal, arguing that otherwise it “would not have a chance to seek meaningful appellate review.”
Phang has asked Sullivan to hold Blanche in contempt and fine him $1,000 a day until he complies. Sullivan has not granted the request, but he has suggested he is prepared to do so.
At an Aug. 13 hearing, Sullivan told the department’s lawyers about the last time he held government attorneys in contempt and warned that such a finding could hurt their careers, CNN reported.
“I told the attorneys I had no choice; I was holding each one of them in contempt,” Sullivan recalled, according to CNN.
“That isn’t a threat,” Sullivan said at the hearing, according to All Rise News.
Sullivan, who has previously held Justice Department lawyers in contempt, has kept the threat of sanctions alive. In his September order, he said a contempt finding over the department’s handling of foreign-language files “at this juncture would be premature,” but he directed Blanche to seek clarification if he considered any part of the order unclear.
“WHY does Todd Blanche fight so hard to keep unredacted (and now even redacted) handwritten interview notes from the American people? Is it because they have to do with Convicted Felon Donald Trump and allegations of his sexual and physical abuse of a 13-year old girl?” Phang wrote on Bluesky Friday.
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