Lawyers for journalist Katie Phang asked a federal judge on 13 July 2026 to hold Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in contempt and fine him 1,000 dollars a day for refusing to unredact Epstein emails, a draft indictment and FBI notes the court ordered public by 2 July. The motion landed two days before Blanche is due before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing to hold the office permanently.

Blanche's department told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on 2 July that it had already complied and would appeal, rather than strip the redactions Sullivan had ordered removed. The contempt motion is Phang's answer to that refusal, and it converts a dispute over documents into a dispute over whether a sitting acting attorney general can defy a court order with a fine attached.

The refusal puts Blanche in continued defiance of a preliminary injunction issued under a law that bars the government from hiding records to spare anyone embarrassment or political damage. The documents at issue name people in Epstein's orbit whom the department has kept redacted while, by its critics' account, exposing the identities of victims.

The order and the finding

Sullivan gave the department until 2 July to strip the redactions or show cause, in a 48-page opinion issued on 25 June in a suit brought by Phang, an attorney and former MS NOW anchor. Sullivan, appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1994, found Phang had standing to sue under the Administrative Procedure Act, was likely to win, and that Blanche "has conceded that he is in violation of the Act" by failing to answer her arguments substantively. He rejected the department's claim that Phang should have used a Freedom of Information Act request instead, holding that FOIA "does not provide an adequate remedy" because the Epstein Files Transparency Act required a broader and less redacted release than FOIA would. He denied the government a stay.

Sullivan is not new to Trump-administration standoffs. He oversaw the criminal case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and challenged the first Trump Justice Department's attempt to drop the charges after Flynn had pleaded guilty, and he presided over January 6 prosecutions.

What the order covers

Five categories of material fall under the injunction. Eight email exchanges in which Epstein discussed a "torture video" and sexual activity with young women, including minors, with the senders or recipients blacked out. Two documents, among them a 2007 draft indictment, with the names of potential co-conspirators redacted. The handwritten FBI notes behind four typed interview reports. Foreign-language records the department said its reviewers lacked the skills to translate and assess. And a formal log accounting for every redaction, which the law requires and the department never filed.

The 2007 draft indictment names people prosecutors once weighed charging alongside Epstein, and it is the single document most likely to identify associates the public record has never named.

What the department said back

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, signing the 2 July filing, said the department had reviewed more than 6 million documents and had turned over everything responsive, and that unredacting the rest would contravene the settled application of the transparency act. He argued that "many communications written by victims, without context, can appear disturbing on their face," and offered to show the disputed material to Sullivan in camera, behind closed doors, rather than release it publicly. The filing challenged Phang's right to sue at all, the strongest of its arguments, and cast Sullivan's finding of a concession as a procedural technicality rather than an admission.

A department spokesperson rejected the ruling in blunter terms. "DOJ has produced all responsive documents and will appeal this decision with confidence," the spokesperson said, calling Sullivan's reading perverse and saying the judge was asking the department to unredact the names of victims who, it said, sadly became co-conspirators.

The names behind the redactions

One 2009 email in the tranche recorded Epstein saying he "loved" the torture video, sent to a recipient the department redacted. Blanche himself later suggested, on social media and during the litigation, that the recipient was the Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, former chief executive of the Dubai logistics firm DP World. Bin Sulayem has not commented, and no court has tied him to the video's contents.

The FBI notes cover a woman who told the bureau that Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was about 13, and that Trump assaulted her. The bureau interviewed her four times and recorded finding her credible. Trump has denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein and has not been charged. The allegation remains untested in any court, and the department has described the material as unfounded and false.

The law, the confirmation and what comes next

Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with near-unanimity in November 2025, sponsored by Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna and signed by Trump, requiring the department to publish Epstein records by 19 December 2025. The department missed that deadline, released about 3.5 million pages, and has acknowledged withholding roughly 2.5 million more it calls privileged or irrelevant. The statute forbids withholding on grounds of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, to any official, public figure or foreign dignitary.

Brendan Ballou, who represents Phang and founded the Public Integrity Project, said "the government ignored a law passed by Congress and then refused to defend its own conduct in court, all for the sake of protecting the rich and powerful." The department is taking the fight to the D.C. Circuit, where a stay could freeze any disclosure for months.

Sullivan set a briefing schedule on the contempt question, with Phang's team filing on 13 July and Blanche due to respond by 20 July. If Sullivan grants the motion, he can order Blanche to appear and explain himself in person and impose the daily fine Phang has requested, putting an acting attorney general before the bench to defend withholding records his own president signed into law. Blanche's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee falls on 15 July, between the contempt filing and his deadline to answer it. The redaction log the law demanded has still not been filed.