Trump’s DOJ walloped by federal judge with demand over missing Epstein files: report

A federal judge has issued Attorney General Todd Blanche a deadline of next Thursday to explain why it failed to fork over a trove of foreign-language documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, Punchbowl News’ Scott MacFarlane reported Friday.

The order came amid a lawsuit filed against Blanche in April by former MSNBC host and attorney Katie Phang, who in June won a preliminary injunction ordering the Justice Department (DOJ) to unredact key Epstein-related documents. The DOJ has stonewalled the case, however, with one DOJ attorney “turning red” and “stammering” last week when confronted by Judge Emmet Sullivan on why his agency had failed to comply with his orders.

“Judge orders Justice Dept & Todd Blanche to respond by Thursday to latest motion in [Katie Phang’s] lawsuit, which seeks release of more Epstein Files,” MacFarlane wrote Friday in a social media post on X. “Blanche and his agency must answer for why they haven't sufficiently turned over FBI agent interview notes.”

Writing on her Substack last week, Phang expressed her shock at the DOJ’s open defiance of Sullivan’s orders in what has been one of the few Epstein files-related lawsuits to gain traction.

“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 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.’”