Judge Sullivan Denied Blanche a Partial Stay While Katie Phang Says the FBI Notes Never Hit the Public Docket

On September 21, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan refused to give Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche the partial stay Blanche wanted in journalist Katie Phang’s Epstein files lawsuit. Three days later, the public docket still did not show a notice that the most sensitive chamber delivery had arrived. Phang says a Justice Department lawyer emailed her side anyway, with a one-line claim of compliance. Those two facts can both be true, and neither one is the same as a judge confirming what he was handed.

Il caso è Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Phang, an attorney and independent journalist, sued on April 27, 2026. She argues that Blanche, in his official capacity, has not obeyed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the statute President Donald Trump signed on November 19, 2025. The act set a December 19, 2025 deadline for the bulk of the government’s Epstein records to be public, with narrow room for redaction. Phang’s suit is not a request for gossip. It is an Administrative Procedure Act case about whether the department followed the statute Congress passed.

What Sullivan already decided before September

On June 25, Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction. In the accompanying opinion he wrote that Blanche had not answered Phang’s arguments in substance, and that the Attorney General had therefore conceded a violation of the act. Politico’s account of the ruling said the department had effectively admitted it was out of compliance with the law Congress passed the previous November. The court denied a request to pause the order for an appeal. The July 2 deadline was real: produce specified material with fewer redactions, or show cause why the black bars should stay.

The categories were concrete. Sullivan wanted sender and recipient names restored, or justified, on email chains with Jeffrey Epstein that discussed a “torture video” and sexual activity involving young women, including minors. He wanted co-conspirator identities in a draft indictment and related records revisited. He wanted the department to start on foreign-language material that reviewers had said they could not assess. And he wanted the FBI interview record of a woman who has alleged that Epstein introduced her to Trump in the 1980s, when she was about 13, and that Trump assaulted her. The Hill reported that the FBI interviewed her more than once and that page-count gaps remained even after later releases. None of that is a finding that the allegation is true. It is a finding that the statute, as Sullivan reads it, does not let the department hide the interview behind a shrug.

July and August did not end the fight. A July 25 order pushed documents into chambers. On August 6, Sullivan set a public hearing for August 13 because the department still had not documented its claim that certain redacted names were victims. Coverage of that hearing quotes the judge telling the courtroom the public had a right to know what was going on, and raising contempt as a live possibility.

The September 16 order, and the stay he would not grant

On September 16, Sullivan filed a memorandum opinion and order, ECF No. 43, answering the pile of responses to the June injunction. He discharged the show-cause demands on some specific redactions, including several of the email and co-conspirator documents. He did not close the case. He ordered Blanche to deliver, by 11 a.m. on September 24, in-camera documentation for redactions the department says protect victims. He ordered the underlying FBI interview notes, redacted and unredacted, for the FD-302 reports numbered EFTA01245620, EFTA02858481, EFTA02858491, and EFTA02858495. And he ordered the department to start reviewing and producing foreign-language material that may fall under the act, and to tell the court and the parties that the review was underway, on the same September 24 clock. If any piece of the order was unclear, Blanche had until September 21 to ask.

Blanche non ha speso quella settimana solo per chiarimenti. Venerdì 18 settembre, alle ore 20:45, il dipartimento si è trasferito per un soggiorno parziale in attesa di appello, ECF n. 46. La fetta che voleva congelare era la recensione in lingua straniera, non una discarica pubblica di ogni pagina rimanente. La mozione ha chiesto una sentenza entro il pomeriggio del 21 settembre, una richiesta in seguito presentata alle ore 20 nella risposta. L'ordine del 21 settembre di Sullivan, ECF No. 49, è smussato per la procedura. La Regola Civile Locale 7(m) ha richiesto una buona fede con il lato di Phang prima che la mozione fosse presentata, e una dichiarazione nella mozione circa se fosse contraria. La corte ha detto che il dipartimento non l'ha fatto. Ha anche notato che il deposito è atterrato sopra Yom Kippur senza preavviso al querelante. Sullivan ha scritto che la sola violazione della regola era motivo di negare la mozione, e che avrebbe negato sul merito comunque, per le ragioni nel parere di ingiunzione di giugno. Egli assunse, senza decidere, che l'ordine del 16 settembre era anche attraente.

Poi ha fatto la cosa stretta che un giudice distrettuale a volte fa quando un tribunale di appello sta per essere chiesto lo stesso sollievo. Ha negato il soggiorno. Soggiornò temporaneamente solo il pezzo di start-and-notice in lingua straniera dell'ordine del 16 settembre, così Blanche avrebbe potuto chiedere al circuito DC di congelare quel pezzo e di trasferirsi in expedite. Le parti devono presentare un avviso congiunto, con raccomandazioni per quello che dovrebbe accadere dopo, entro tre giorni dopo le regole del circuito su quella prossima mozione. Il soggiorno temporaneo non menziona le note dell'FBI. Non menziona la documentazione del nome della vittima. Quelle consegne di camera erano ancora a ore 11 il 24 settembre.

An email is not a docket entry

Venerdì 25 settembre, Phang stava dicendo ai giornalisti che il pontile pubblico non aveva nulla a partire dalla scadenza di giovedì. In un racconto di Erik De La Garza a Raw Story, ha detto che tutti dalla sua parte stavano guardando per un deposito e che nulla è apparso. Ha anche detto l'avvocato del Dipartimento di Giustizia Andrew Block ha inviato ai suoi avvocati una frase che ha citato come: "Sì, abbiamo rispettato l'ordine del tribunale." Phang ha detto che crede che Blanche Girare le note scritte a mano non dichiarate e redatte dalle quattro interviste dell'FBI. Ha anche detto che il giudice Sullivan non ha confermato in modo indipendente ciò che è arrivato. Il suo video del 25 settembre fa la stessa distinzione: la produzione rivendicata dall'avvocato del dipartimento, e una lotta separata per il soggiorno in lingua straniera nella corte di appelli.

A claim of compliance delivered by email, with no public notice, is exactly the kind of fact a careful reader should not inflate. It is not proof the notes are complete. It is not proof they were withheld. It is not proof the September 24 chamber deadline was blown, and it is not proof the judge is satisfied. MeidasTouch reported that the department says it handed over unredacted handwritten notes from four interviews with a woman who alleges Trump sexually and physically abused her as a minor, and that a real question remains about what else was in the delivery. Michael Popok, in a Meidas clip posted September 25, described the government’s formal Answer another way: the department denied the core allegations, and it answered the accusation of missing and over-redacted Trump-related records by saying it had complied and had produced millions of pages. Page counts have been the department’s refrain since the winter. The AEGIS Alliance has already reported the department’s own concession that less than 1 percent of the files were out in early January. Millions of pages can still be a fraction.

Why the chamber fight is the whole case

Sullivan’s contempt warning from the summer is still the backdrop. He has said a contempt finding would be premature until an order is clear and a violation of that clear order is shown. The September 16 opinion gave Blanche a short window to say the order was ambiguous. The September 21 ruling says the stay motion was not that kind of question, and that the court would not reward a Friday-night filing that skipped the meet-and-confer. What remains is a judge reading notes in chambers, a plaintiff who says she was told by email that the notes arrived, and an appeals court that has been invited to freeze only the translation project.

The rest of the Epstein paper trail has not waited on this one docket. Survivors’ litigation against Bank of America resolved at $72.5 million. A Swiss bank’s financing of the New Hampshire property where Ghislaine Maxwell was hiding is its own documented chapter. Blanche’s own account of why he sits in the Attorney General’s chair, and of the calendar Congress wrote, is already part of the political file and of the deadline fight. Phang’s case is the piece with a judge attached.

Until Sullivan says, on the record, what he received at 11 a.m. on September 24, the honest status is narrower than a headline. The partial stay was denied. The foreign-language clock is paused only so the D.C. Circuit can be asked to pause it. The FBI notes were still due in chambers. Phang says the department told her, off the docket, that it complied. The public case page did not, by the next day, confirm the delivery. That gap is the story. The politica scrivania e il crime desk at The AEGIS Alliance will keep reading the docket, not the slogan.