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The Breakdown | Trump DOJ in Crisis after Major Epstein Ruling
00:30:13
Allison talks to Katie Phang about her major legal win forcing the DOJ to turn over more Epstein files.
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- [00:02]
A
It's no surprise that newsmakers try to manipulate the audience. They want you to believe that they are the one holding the line, and they'll use any trick they can to get you there.
- [00:10]
B
But don't let them fool you.
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A
Get Unspun. I'm Amanda Sturgel. I've been a reporter, and today I teach future reporters to cut the spin and think critically about what newsmakers say. My podcast, Unspun, shows you how to know when you're being manipulated by the news, learn to spot the tricks, and how to make up your own mind about what's true. So if you're tired of being fooled by the news, subscribe to Unspun today. Unspun. Because you deserve the truth.
- [00:40]
C
Hey, everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of the Breakdown. I'm Allison Gill, host of the Daily Beans podcast. I'm gonna. I'm gonna Rachel Maddow you for a second. I'm gonna take you back to World War II, when a small group of independent journalists known as the Murrow Boys kind of turned the tide on public opinion of the war by bringing the raw, unfiltered reality of it to allied living rooms around the world. Handpicked by CBS News radio legend, CBS News Radio, I think, just closed down Edward R. Murrow. This small band of independent reporters shaped the narrative of the global conflict in a way that wasn't really being brought to people. And today we're seeing that same kind of independent journalism and shaping the narrative of the Epstein files and the Epstein class, which is one of the biggest stories globally right now. But in order for independent journalists, unbound now by corporate media to do that job, they need all of the information they're entitled to under the law. Enter Katie Fang, who, along with her amazing lawyers, filed a pretty novel lawsuit against Todd Blanche in his official capacity as acting Attorney General. To get the Epstein material, she needs to bring the reality of the depravity therein to we the people. And we have some huge breaking news this week because a federal judge named Emmett Sullivan, the same judge, by the way, who pointed at the American flag in his courtroom and called Mike Flynn a traitor to his country and asked Mueller prosecutors whether he could be charged with treason. That judge has granted Katie Fang her preliminary injunction in this case to get the Epstein files. Now, in order to get a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff has to meet some basic criteria called the Luhan Factors, standing, in other words, and jurisdiction that's named Lujan Factors, named after a case dating back, I think, to, like, the. The 1900s. 1990. Now, Lujan laid out the factors required for Article 3 standing, and they include, first, that you have to show an injury. In fact, next, you have to show a sufficient causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of. Third, you have to show that your injury will be redressed by a decision in your favor and can't be redressed another way. And finally, you, as the plaintiff, bear that burden of establishing those elements. Now, Katie, among other things, sued Todd Blanche as a journalist, saying she's being harmed by the withholding of information in the Epstein files because she can't do her job without them. And that not being able to do her job financially harms her is a pretty novel legal theory. Now, additionally, Todd Blanche argued that the court doesn't have jurisdiction because Katie can simply file a Freedom of Information act request with the people who are withholding to get the stuff that he's now just admitted he is withholding. But the judge in this case, Judge Emmett Sullivan and the D.C. district Court, has granted Katie her preliminary injunction against Todd Blanche, concluding that she does have standing and that the Freedom of Information act does not provide an adequate remedy because the information she seeks would likely be redacted under the Freedom of Information Act. And here's a quote, the department's own post Epstein act responses to FOIA requests for the Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell files ref. Blanche's argument that FOIA provides an adequate remedy. Now, Todd Blanche has been given until July 2, a couple days from now, to hand over what Katie has asked for or explain why he's not going to. And today, Katie joins me to discuss the explosive information that Blanche has to answer for on today's episode of the Breakdown. All right, everybody, welcome to the Breakdown. Katie, Katie, congratulations. And to you and your legal team.
- [04:23]
B
My goodness, I'm glad you included the legal team, Alison, because Brendan Ballew and Sam Ward Packard at the Public Integrity Project deserve all the accolades here. Some really fierce, brilliant thinking outside of the box strategy coming from my legal team. And I'm just. I'm just so excited, right? I mean, the lawyer in me is geeking out from the quality of the order that we got from Judge Sullivan and tackling all of the big legal issues that are contained in my lawsuit. And then there's just the human part of me that says, look, we can fight. We can fight and we can win, right? We can stand up and speak out for people that need help and that need our allyship and our advocacy. And so it really is such a. It's a good day, right? And I know that we take our wins where we can get them, especially how dark things have been through for, I don't know, 10 years now.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And to address some of those concerns, people commenting on and either here or on social media about, oh, well, Todd's gonna ignore it or, oh, well, you know, the. That it'll be appealed. Yes, of course. Every single thing, every piece of news that we deliver to the public about court hearings, always the same rules always apply. Right. We still, we still have to ask what the Todd Blanche is going to do. People are like, oh, what, what happens when he doesn't do anything? Well, there's a procedure. You file motions, you try to get a show cause order as to why you failed to file a court order, follow a court order, you may be open contempt proceedings, get a little discovery on why you failed to do that. And maybe there's some Rule 11 sanctions. It's a process. And of course these things can be appealed, and of course contempt proceedings can be, you know, sought after and things like that. But I just wanted to kind of quickly upfront address that because this is. I want people to understand what a massive win this is and to not overlook it or sweep it under the rug. To understand the fight that independent journalists, like I said, unburdened by corporate interests, are able to undertake to. To get at this administration death by a thousand paper cuts. Keep going. Even if you're friggin, you know, in Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks shooting at a tank with a Glock 23, at least you're doing it. It was probably not a Glock 23. Don't write into me. It's fine. But this is. This is hugely and massively important. The work that you're doing and the work that your lawyers are doing. And I really want to go over the. The meat of this case, these five things that Todd Blanche now has until July 2nd to answer to. Can you talk about those five things? Because they're big.
- [07:11]
B
Yeah. And I want to remind folks that this is just something called a preliminary injunction. So it doesn't speak to the entirety of the lawsuit, meaning I still continue to move forward with my lawsuit seeking the entirety of the Epstein files to be released, including those that Blanche is sitting on, and to be released in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency act, meaning with the proper redactions. Because again, I want to underscore the redaction of the identities to protect the privacy and the confidentiality of the victims and survivors is sacrosanct. And the DOJ has shown Repeatedly that they don't have respect for them. But that's definitely something that I want to make sure people understand. I just want the DOJ to do what the law requires it to do. I'm not asking for anything more, but I'm certainly not going to take anything less, Allison. And so that's a big part of the lawsuit. But the preliminary injunction was brought at this early stage of the litigation. And I also want to kind of maybe bolster people's energy and spirits. You know, my original lawsuit, Allison, was filed April 27. So it's the very end of April, the beginning of May. We're only, you know, towards the end of June now. So this case, as often happens in federal court, is moving along and in large part due to Judge Sullivan. No moth growing on stones with Judge Sullivan. Let me be clear. He does not, he does not slow down for anything. But the five areas that we identified were really specific because not only did we find them to be the most egregious violations or some of the most, excuse me, Egregious violations of the Epstein Files Transparency act on their face, but there's a certain exigency or urgency into getting this relief from the Department of Justice. And the five areas very quickly are the redaction log that should have been done by Todd Blanche back in December of 2025 that identifies the redactions. It explains why they're redacted. I also want to.
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C
And Katie, I think all he did when he released these was put out a memo 15 days after the final production, which was late to say all the redactions are proper, period. Instead of each individual redaction having to be explained, which is, I think, what the law required.
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B
Yeah, the law said you had to do something that looked very much like a privilege log in in a case where you literally line item out the redactions and provide pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency act, the permitted redaction or withholding. Blanche just summarily said, nothing to see here. Move on. No offense, Todd, but your credibility is shot. And obviously we know you've screwed this up. And Pami Jo with the bad hair didn't help your situation either by saying that this was your job to handle the rollout of these files. The other thing is we know that this was an international sex trafficking ring that involved multi country nationals, citizens, et cetera. Todd Blanche, in that same announcement in January of this year, said we didn't have capacity. We didn't even bother to try to translate the foreign language documents. So Alison, not Only did they not even try to translate, they didn't even produce them, so that people that maybe are fluent could read them and figure it out. Now Blanch said no. So Judge Sullivan said, aha, yes you do now.
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C
Yeah. And he also pointed out you've had six months now.
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B
Oh yeah, he zinged him hard. Oh yeah, he zinged him on that. I mean he definitely brought up on his own the fact that December 19, 2025 and every day thereafter has been a violation of the law. I mean, the next area is internal DOJ documents. Two specifically. One is the proposed indictment that was prepared by the Southern District of Florida, which was then headed up by Alex Acosta. But then we know Alex Acosta greenlit blessed the sweetheart deal, which meant Epstein gets a non prosecution agreement and then he gets those bullshit state charges, which we know even while he was quote doing his time on the state charges, he was sexually assaulting other women and also just literally putting his kicking his feet up on the desk and hanging out on house arrest. But that as well as the memorandum that was prepared by the AUSA for that multi count 60 something page indictment in those documents, Allison, the DOJ has redacted the names of the co defendants, which is not just a co conspirator, my friend. A co defendant would have been somebody who had been presented to a grand jury in the seeking of an indictment against that person. So any estimation of, I don't know, maybe it was, you know, a prospective victim, whatever. No, at that time. Now look, this is still supposition on my part, Allison, because nobody's ever told me from the DOJ why it was redacted in the first instance. And then there's a handful of emails that we pulled that were improperly and illegally redacted for sender and recipient names and email addresses. And some of them are incredibly disturbing. Some of them talk about a torture video, some of them talk about a Lolita type of girl, some of them talk about your littlest one was so naughty. I mean the protection of a perpetrator was never supposed to be done by this law. In fact, it's the opposite. Right? And so we identified a handful of emails. We know there's more, but folks, for purposes of the preliminary injunction, because I wanted to be able to dig past and do more research and investigation into those perpetrators and to learn more about who those people were and to also find out why the DOJ is hid them from us. Right? That's another part of the story that I think is important. And then Last and certainly definitely not least, the FBI interview notes. For the four interviews that were conducted of a woman who alleges that when she was just 13 years old, she was sexually assaulted and physically abused by convicted FELON Donald Trump. The 302s have been produced, which are kind of the summaries of the interviews that were done by the FBI. But the underlying interview notes never were produced. They haven't even been produced with redactions, just never produced. And we know they exist because the Epstein files production showed an Excel spreadsheet or a spreadsheet that identified the interview notes having been turned over in discovery to Ghislaine Maxwell's defense team when she was being prosecuted by the Southern District of New York. So that's the fifth area. And again, important. Why? Myriad reasons. One, I'd like to know more information about somebody who was allegedly assaulted by the President of the United States. But number two, we are in a midterms year and the Epstein files has become a very kind of hot topic for purposes of some of these races. And in order to have, I think, a fulsome, fully comprehensive and transparent discourse on political viability of some of these candidates and how they stand on stuff like child predation, child rape, sex trafficking, I think that we need to have all of this information. And so this is all very time sensitive, thus the reason why we brought it by way of this preliminary injunction.
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C
Yeah, and I think what I'd like to kind of the word I want to get out here is that like you said, the overall umbrella lawsuit is to get all of the Epstein files. This is five specific time sensitive things related to your motion for preliminary injunction. But even before we get any of that, before we even get a response from Todd Blanche, this lawsuit, this granting of a preliminary injunction is a win in and of itself because we learned some things about Todd Blanche that we didn't know before. We now have a judge saying Todd Blanche has admitted that he did not follow the Epstein the law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He says, here's a quote. By not responding substantively to your five things, the Attorney General has conceded Ms. Fang's merits arguments in the pending motion. A lot of times, Katie, when we file our Freedom of Information act requests, when we file a file our lawsuits, obviously the end goal is to get what we want. But there are tiny little goals along the way that actually have a major impact, like just getting the government to admit they have a document or getting the government to admit that they've wrongfully withheld it, or getting the government to admit that. That they didn't follow the law. And that is so important here because Judge Emmett Sullivan has put down on paper that Todd Blanche has conceded that he failed to follow the law and conceded your. Your merits arguments.
- [15:58]
B
Yeah. And so under the law, when you are seeking a preliminary injunction, the analysis, per the case law, is that you have to have a likelihood of success on the merits of your case, because why give somebody an injunction if ultimately they're going to lose? So Judge Sullivan's order not only gives me the immediate relief I'm seeking, but it kind of says to me, as the litigant, you are more likely than not to be seceding on the ultimate kind of end goal of your lawsuit, which, again, is the full disclosure of the Epstein files. Now, I want to also quickly footnote the cool thing about this motion being granted, as well as the production of the redaction log, I think buttresses my argument for the appointment of the Special Master, because with the redaction log, I'm going to need the assistance of the Special Master to make sure that what the DOJ represents in the redaction log is actually true. Because the DOJ is operating under a cloud of no credibility going in, especially when a judge is found that the Attorney General who presides over the entire DOJ has conceded that he has violated the law that is at issue. And so it kind of all comes first, full circle. But, you know, this type of case really kind of sends a message to, I think, to Congress as Todd Blanche goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee in just a few weeks for his confirmation hearing on the 15th and the 16th. This case, and I have already been told by members of Congress this outcome has now become incredibly relevant of their inquiry to Todd Blanche, because now you have a man who wants the permanent job, who a judge, has found that the man has conceded that he has broken the law. And a law that has to do with the greatest stain on American history. Right. So it is. It's good. It's good for a rule of law, it's good for justice, it's good for transparency. And as I've said to several of the survivors in the survivor community, it's just yet another step towards accountability here.
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C
Yeah, for sure. And something else that generally happens when somebody might be like the government might be about to lose a lawsuit or a plaintiff or a defendant might be about to lose a lawsuit or lose a preliminary injunction, they always like to say in their, in their rebuttal or in their reply, we don't think for all these reasons listed above. We think you should deny the preliminary injunction. But if you do, please give us a seven day stay so that we can appeal. And generally judges do that, right? We see this all the time. And sometimes the news blows it a little bit out of proportion. And they're like, judge blocks this. And it's like, it's just a. It's a seven day stay on their own order to give somebody, some people time to take advantage of their appellate rights. But Blanche asked for a debt kind of stay here or the government asked for that. Judge Sullivan said the court will not issue a stay for the reasons stated in this memorandum opinion. The Attorney General has conceded that he violation of the act. Ms. Fang is not requesting the immediate production of the documents, but rather that the Attorney General show cause if he declines to do so. So no, sir, you do not get a stay from me.
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B
You don't get the seven days that he wanted for the emergency relief. And then this guy had the balls to ask for another 60 days.
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C
Yes.
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B
And you know, Alison, what's crazy is. And the judge said, hell no. You know what's crazy is that they asked for those stays in their opposition brief. It's like they already knew what was coming down the pipeline. And our reply briefer were like, yeah, hell no, what do you need? Because as Judge Sullivan has noted, this guy has had a six month Runway of time on compliance. And then they had the nerve to come at me to be like, you delayed Ms. Fang in bringing your motion for preliminary injunction, so it really can't be so exigent or urgent that. And here's the crazy thing. Yeah, I kind of delayed a little bit, but not materially so because I was waiting for you to actually do the right damn thing and you never did. And so in my mind I'm like, okay, I saw you were never gonna do the right thing, so I brought my lawsuit. And then I immediately, you know, maybe within a couple of weeks, not even brought my motion for preliminary injunction. And so just.
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C
Right. Cause you know that if you had brought it immediately, he'd have said, you haven't given me enough time to release the files. So like, no, I was giving you due diligence, time to do your job. And I think I've waited long enough and that's why it's now. And Judge Sullivan was like, yeah, agreed with all of it.
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B
I think somebody in the Department of Justice is having a bad day today. Because, you know, I'm not sure, Alison, how much this has been on Todd Blanche's radar, to be honest with you. Like, I don't really know in light of all the shit that's been going on with the slush fund, about which you are obviously very well familiar with your own stuff. The immunity on the tax exposure and other crimes. Right. And civil exposure. I don't really know if this one kind of like percolated itself to the top, but now it's like a slam in your face, good morning, happy Friday energy kind of thing happening here. Because, I mean, look, you're right. They're gonna appeal it. And then, you know, you get a panel of three on the D.C. circuit that hopefully understands that Judge Sullivan intentionally wrote a thoughtful, detailed and well reasoned 48 page memorandum for a reason.
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C
Right.
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B
And look, you never know who you're going to get on the draw. But I also think this is the Epstein files. And I also think, as we've seen, the Supreme Court not taking Ghislaine Maxwell's petition for writ of certiory. Right. I don't know how appealing, pun intended, an Epstein files case is going to be for a judge. It'd be interesting. I'm even.
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C
And even if you get like Katzis and Rao and you know, they do a two, three, I am assuming you'll file for an en banc rehearing with the entire panel.
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B
Just like Judge Boasberg got his en banc rehearing kind of stuff. Yeah. Look, we'll chase it down as far as we need to go. You can count on us to do that because we are creating new law, which is kind of trippy. My husband, who's also a lawyer, and I were saying, my husband's like, you know, you know, they're gonna talk about this case in, like, law school. And I'm like, huh?
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C
He's like, yeah, it's so important that he found that. It's so important that the judge found that the Freedom of Information act isn't an alternative remedy for you.
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B
It's a standalone federal statute from the Epstein Files Transparency Act. You know, it lives on its own. It doesn't live together.
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C
Yeah. And this kind of new look at the Administrative Procedure act, which is the act that I use to sue to block the slush fund. Right. Like, I think mine is the only case that. No, I think the Crew case did, too, and perhaps the Virginia one. But that's another kind of interesting way. And that's why your legal team is so important here and to working with you and to be able to find those novel legal theories and apply them and then to have a judge grant them in this way, it's just spectacular. And the wins that just come out of this preliminary injunction, regardless of what happens with the rest of the case case, are massive and will have lasting legal effects, I think, in the years to come.
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B
Especially the informational harm.
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A
Right.
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B
Because part of what I've alleged is economic harm, which, and I've always been reassuring people, I've done it here on your show as well. I'm not looking for money at all, at all. And ironically, the federal government wanted me to post some crazy ass bond if I were to win this injunction. And the judge is like, she can post a dollar, a dollar. So I was like, we can all, Everybody chip in one penny and we'll all have been contributed to the 100 cents nominal bond. But it's not about money. The economic harm here is, you know, the, the inability to be able to garner views and subscribers. Because I get limited informationally because of the information harm.
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A
Right.
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B
Because I have. The inability to be able to get the information, to do my job as a reporter, to create good law that really solidifies and strengthens the informational harm arguments is important because we are living in a time where this administration chooses to have and prefers for us to be in darkness, prefers for us in the media and in the public to really not know what's going on behind the scenes because it inerts to their benefit. Right. And so if I say, well, Congress in its separate power told you that this is now a law and you as the executive are sworn to have to uphold those laws and do it with, with faithfully defend and do those laws, then guess what? If you don't give this information doj, how am I supposed to be able to do my job if that was the intent of this law, which it was. And so I love that Judge Sullivan took this and he really didn't just summarily address it, he really dug in on it. And so he's creating better law. And that's what we need to be, you know, so grateful about. I mean, Judge Sullivan is somebody who's shown that he will stand up and do the right thing. And at a time when we spend so much time, Alison, talking about all the bad that is not being done, it is good to be able to point to something and say, look at the people doing the right thing.
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C
Yeah. And I think one of my favorite things is the DOJ kind of being forced to recognize the impact of independent journalists. I remember in one of my FOIA cases, at first they were like, you're not a media person. And then they had to actually, we appealed that, and they actually had to issue a letter saying the FBI recognizes Alison Gill as a media person. But, like, in this particular case, because Todd Blanche was arguing she's not losing money. Look, gets hundreds of thousands of views on her YouTube channel, and Da, da, da, da, da. Like, completely missing the point.
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B
And.
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C
And I don't put it past somebody who's a personal lawyer for Donald Trump to miss the point on what that means. Right. Like, oh, she's making money, she's fine. That is so beyond the point. And he completely missed it because, you know, hit the bottom line is just everything to him and his client, who is Donald Trump before and now as the acting Attorney General, trying to become the permanent Attorney general. So I just love that where he's like, Katie's, look, she's super popular. He even put, like, all the hundreds of thousands of views that you get on your YouTube channel.
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B
And it's about Epstein. Because people want to know. People really want to know. It is an important part of our discourse and an important part of my job. And that's why people want to watch and learn.
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C
Yeah. Because they argue out of the other side of their mouth that the Epstein matter is not of significant media concern. That's what they did in my. You know, I've got. One of my Freedom of Information act requests is to get those training videos that the DOJ sent to the FBI on how to redact Trump's name.
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B
Yeah.
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C
That's when they were like, you're not real media. And then they were like, yes, okay, you're real media. And then they were like, you did. They actually said that the Epstein matter is not of significant media importance. And. But then they're like, she gets tons of views. Like, they just step on Raikes left and right in their own legal filings over and over and over again. And I'm glad that this judge is seeing it. What's Next?
- [27:32]
B
So, the June 30 hearing has been canceled because there's no need for it. There was going to be a hearing on the preliminary injunction, and the deadline as imposed by the order from Judge Sullivan is final Friday, July 2nd. And so we reasonably anticipate seeing some type of appeal being sent to the D.C. circuit. But as you and I have now discussed, Todd asked for two stays, hasn't gotten any. So he'll also have to try to get a stay from the D.C. circuit in the meantime. So we'll keep our eyes on it. Obviously, I'll let you know as soon as we have something going on. But assuming arguendo no stay and assuming arguendo no appeal, I mean, and you would think, Allison, that they would be scrambling to just comply. Like, I'm not asking for them to do anything more than what the law tells them they have to do, Allison. And I love saying that because it's true. I'm not saying, look, if you do this, I'll give you extra credit. Like, I'm just telling you, just do it. It's just what the law told you to do. And I think, you know, we hear that phrase, no one is above the law all the time. And it's true. Not even Todd Blanche is above the law.
- [28:45]
C
Not supposed to be, anyhow. All right. Looking forward to it.
- [28:49]
B
Yeah.
- [28:49]
C
And I love that, because he didn't grant a stay, that now the. The appeals court actually has to step in to stop it.
- [28:55]
B
And so thank me, D.C. circuit. We'll see what happens. Yeah.
- [28:59]
C
Yep. And we'll be looking forward to that. And I just want to thank you, probably on behalf of everybody here who's watching and everybody who listens after the fact for being brave and standing up and doing this and all of these sort of things that have gone. You've gone through with becoming an independent journalist and all that, like, all of the whole universe had to line up just right to make this a reality so that you can help get some justice for the survivors of the Epstein saga. So I just want to thank you for doing this and let you know that I'm with you. High five. I appreciate this. And thanks to everybody here watching for supporting independent journalists who do this kind of work every day.
- [29:45]
B
Thanks, Allison.
- [29:46]
C
It's so good to see you, my friend. I look forward to catching up with you after July 2nd. And thanks to everybody for watching. Thanks to Midas Touch for having us here. If you want daily News with appropriate profanity, if you're into that, you can listen to the Daily Beans podcast. I'm Alison Gill. Thanks for watching the Breakdown.
- [30:36]
D
Love this video. Support independent media and unlock exclusive content ad free videos and custom emojis by becoming a paid member of our YouTube channel today. You can also gift memberships to others. Let's keep growing together.
- [30:56]
A
It's no surprise that newsmakers try to manipulate the audience. They want you to believe that they are the one holding the line, and they'll use any trick they can to get you there. But don't let them fool you. Get unspun. I'm Amanda Sturgill. I'VE been a reporter, and today I teach future reporters to cut the spin and think critically about what newsmakers say. My podcast, Unspun, shows you how to know when you're being manipulated by the news, learn to spot the tricks, and how to make up your own mind about what's true. So if you're tired of being fooled by the news, subscribe to Unspun today. Unspun because you deserve the truth.