A federal judge warned Justice Department lawyers on 13 August that he would open contempt proceedings over the department's refusal to release Jeffrey Epstein records Congress ordered disclosed under a law signed in November 2025.

Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told the department's counsel that fines, jail and lasting harm to the individual lawyers' careers were all available to him, and that the warning was a promise rather than a threat.

Eight months have run since the statutory deadline passed, and the Justice Department has still not published the redaction log the law requires, has not produced the handwritten FBI interview notes Sullivan ordered released in June, and told the court on 13 August that it could not give any date on which it would.

"The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case," Sullivan said.

What the Act requires

Public Law 119-38, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, gave the Attorney General 30 days from Trump's signature on 19 November 2025 to publish every unclassified Justice Department record on Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The deadline fell on 19 December 2025.

The Act reaches flight logs and travel records for aircraft and vessels Epstein owned or operated, the names of people and entities tied to his trafficking and financial networks, immunity deals and non-prosecution agreements, sealed settlements, internal department communications on charging decisions and communications about the destruction or alteration of records.

Withholding is permitted on five grounds only: victim identity, child rape media, active investigations, images of death or injury and properly classified national security material. The statute bars withholding for "embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

Every redaction requires a written justification published in the Federal Register and delivered to Congress. A report listing what was released and what was withheld, naming every government official who appears in the records, was due within 15 days. Neither has been published.

The lawsuit

Journalist Katie Phang sued the Attorney General and the Justice Department on 27 April 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in a case docketed as Phang v. Blanche, 1:26-cv-01417. Her counsel is Emily Gilman of the Public Integrity Project.

Sullivan granted Phang a preliminary injunction on 25 June 2026, finding that the Attorney General had not answered her arguments on the merits and had therefore conceded them. He set a nominal bond of one dollar and refused a stay.

The June order directed the government to show cause why it should not lift redactions covering sender and recipient names in eight emails, lift redactions covering co-conspirator names in draft indictment material, produce the underlying FBI interview notes behind four FD-302 reports, review and produce foreign-language material and publish the redaction log in the Federal Register.

Sullivan wrote in that opinion that there is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action.

The government's answer was to seek 60 more days and to tell the court it strongly disagreed with the ruling.

The handwritten notes

Handwritten notes from an FBI interview with a woman who has made allegations against Trump sit at the centre of the dispute. Trump denies the allegations.

The Justice Department told Sullivan the notes are "substantially similar to" FD-302 reports it has already released, and that reviewing handwritten material raises the risk of exposing victim information. Sullivan told the department the Act contains no exception for records that duplicate other records, and that he needed the originals to check whether the department's account of them is accurate.

Among the specific redactions Sullivan ordered the government to justify is a heading marked "Co-conspirators" in draft indictment material listing four names, three of which the department says belong to protected victims. One redacted name is Lesley Groff, Epstein's executive assistant, who was never charged and whose prosecution the government formally declined in 2021. The department's own filing misspells her first name.

Another of the eight email chains is a 2009 message referring to a torture video.

From order to hearing

Sullivan ordered the government on 25 July to hand over the unredacted material for private review in chambers by 3 p.m. on 30 July. Todd Blanche filed a notice of compliance at 2:28 p.m. that day, hand delivered to chambers.

Reviewing what arrived, Sullivan found the submissions did not comply with his order. The material identified as protected was marked only as personally identifiable information, not as victim or law enforcement identity.

Justice Department lawyers moved on 5 August to stay the case outright. Sullivan set a hearing instead, and on 11 August ordered Blanche to appear with documentation showing that the names blacked out as victims are in fact victims.

At the 13 August hearing, department lawyer Andrew Block could not commit to any timeline. Asked whether he could offer the court 30 days, 60 days or any figure at all, Block said: "I'm not able to."

Sullivan asked whether he should issue another order saying he meant it this time. He then recounted from the bench his own contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the failed corruption case of the late Senator Ted Stevens, and supplied the citation so that the department's lawyers could look up how it ended.

Phang's team has asked for civil fines of $1,000 a day until the department complies. Blanche said the contempt case is absurd. Sullivan gave Phang's lawyers 10 days to file a proposed enforcement order and said he would review in chambers the materials Block brought to court.

The Attorney General

Blanche was confirmed as Attorney General on 8 August 2026 by 50 votes to 49, with Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joining every Democrat against him. He had run the department as acting Attorney General since Trump removed Pam Bondi on 2 April 2026.

Blanche was Trump's personal criminal defence lawyer from 2023, representing him in the hush-money prosecution, the classified documents case and the prosecution over efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He became Deputy Attorney General in 2025 and interviewed Maxwell in prison in July of that year, after which she was moved to a federal prison camp in Texas.

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer urged senators to block the nomination, and told them she had found Blanche abrasive and noncommittal towards survivors.

The Senate went on record against clemency for Maxwell on 29 July 2026, adopting by unanimous consent a resolution from Senator Jacky Rosen opposing any pardon or commutation for her. The vote came days before the Judiciary Committee moved Blanche's nomination forward.

Congress and the log

House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin has asked the department for a review of the unredacted files in its possession. Oversight Democrats led by ranking member Robert Garcia have demanded compliance with a committee subpoena issued to Bondi in March, and Representative Summer Lee moved to hold her in contempt over it.

The Justice Department released roughly three million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images on 30 January 2026, which Blanche said at the time was the last major release the department would make. Redactions across that release remain unexplained in the Federal Register, which is where the statute says the explanations belong.