WASHINGTON — A federal judge overseeing a case focused on the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files pressed government attorneys Thursday about their compliance with his court orders and warned that he has held lawyers in contempt before.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a 41-year veteran of the bench, convened the hearing seeking answers about whether the Trump administration had complied with his previous orders in the case, including one about the need for the Justice Department to publish justifications for the numerous redactions in the released Epstein files.
Justice Department official Andrew Block told Sullivan he was not in a position to commit to a time frame, saying that it was out of his control and that information would be “forthcoming.”
“Christmas is forthcoming,” Sullivan quipped.
Sullivan called his orders “straightforward” and said he was willing to work with the government to obtain compliance.
“You want me to issue another order and say, ‘I really mean it this time’?” Sullivan said at one point.
The case stems from a lawsuit journalist Katie Phang filed against Attorney General Todd Blanche in April, arguing that the Justice Department had failed to comply in full with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law last year. The suit alleges the government failed to make some key redactions, inappropriately redacted other information and improperly withheld documents that referred to President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department had argued that Phang lacked standing to bring the case, and it has said it is “absurd” to claim the Justice Department violated Sullivan’s order in June requiring more information surrounding specific redacted files.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who led the Justice Department when millions of Epstein files were made public, told lawmakers after Trump fired her that “redaction errors” occurred during the records’ release.
At Thursday’s hearing, Sullivan embarked on a history lesson about a previous case before him in which the Justice Department withheld exculpatory evidence: the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, whose conviction the Justice Department moved to reverse in 2009 not long before Stevens died in a plane crash. Sullivan recalled that he held government attorneys in contempt for withholding information and that an appeals court upheld his decision.
Sullivan said it was important for attorneys to know he was a judge willing to “enforce legitimate judicial orders” with the means available to him.
“I’m not in a habit of blindsiding people,” he said.
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He added that he had “absolutely no desire to go down that road again” but wanted to make sure the attorneys were aware that it has happened before.
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Attorney Brendan Ballou, who is representing Phang, said in a statement after the hearing that Blanche had “failed to follow the law.”
“He has failed to produce its redaction log. He has failed to begin producing foreign language documents. He has failed to produce notes concerning Donald Trump,” Ballou said. “The Justice Department’s strategy here is endless delay, and we’re glad that the Court appears to recognize this. Our next step is to file a proposed order for how to handle the Attorney General’s noncompliance, which we plan to do shortly.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that the DOJ “remains committed to protecting the privacy of victims and continues to welcome engagement from victims and their counsel.”
“As demonstrated to the court, many emails that have drawn public scrutiny and remain redacted were sent by women who identify as victims,” the spokesperson said. “The Plaintiff in this case seeks to unmask those victim names, but doing so would violate a binding court order” in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The hearing took place shortly after Blanche, who was recently confirmed as attorney general, addressed Justice Department employees at headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“We will always respect the role of the judiciary. We will not engage in or stand for any sort of performative attacks that undermine the institutions that we are sworn to uphold,” he said. “At the same time, we’re not going to be intimidated.”
