Having now read the four page, yep, four page response, that the Department o...
Todd Blanch gave to Judge Emmett Sullivan in Katie Fang's case against the DOJ for violation of the Epstein File Transparency Act, having now read it, I don't think Judge Sullivan is going
“to be very happy. In fact, I think he's going to be quite upset and I know what happens when”
federal judges and black robes get really upset with a party. And it's not going to be good look for the Department of Justice or Todd Blanch, especially as we are in the midst of the block of a Blanch movement to stop him from being attorney general. Who did he pick to file the paper? Who did he pick as his lawyer? The number two in the Department of Justice, Stan Woodward, and where did Stan Woodward come from? Stan Woodward came out of the woodwork to as a Jan's sixth
criminal defense lawyer and the lawyer for the co-dependent for Donald Trump in the Mara Logo case, who was prosecuted by Jack Smith, a guy named Walt Nautah, who was Donald Trump's Butler
and body man. That Stan Woodward. So I'm not surprised. That was never overly impressed with the
lawyering of Stan Woodward, but now given the opportunity to get the last word in to avoid sanctions by a federal judge, this ain't going to do it. We're going to post it in legal AF sub-stack for you as well. I'm Michael Popeok here here on my destruction legal AF. Let's get to this breaking news story. How did we get here, Katie Fang, friend of ours, and on the mightest touch network, filed a lawsuit as a working journalist claiming she had standing for informational harm,
standing in for the rest of us, to argue that the Epstein File Transparency Act and the Administrative Procedures Act have been violated by Todd Blanch for his failure to turn over documents properly.
“You remember Todd Blanch? That's the guy that went begrudgingly to meet with victims and survivors”
of Epstein in order to try to get a vote from Senator Tom Tillis and it backfired spectacularly on him. So that Todd Blanch has to answer the questions. There were five major categories of documents that needed to be addressed in their filings. One, where is the email related to the sex torture video that was not properly produced in the production? Where are the hand-written notes concerning the FBI 302 witness statements concerning a woman who was a 13-year-old girl when she
claims that Donald Trump sexually abused her? Where are the notes? Where's the reduction log that was required by the statute to be produced? You know, the 200,000 pages of missing documents, you know, blacked out documents. Where is the log? Catalogging? Why they were blacked out and the basis for doing that? None of where are the foreign language documents? None of this was produced at any time ever, in the case. In fact, I had Katy Fang's lead lawyer Brendan Ballou, public integrity
project on with me recently to talk about him seeking a thousand dollar a day find against Todd Blanch for those violations. Let's play a clip of Brendan and me. Is that in the judge's order?
It's incredible. I mean, and when we just back up Penn steps here, you know, all of this is due to
Katy Fang, you know, having courage to bring this suit and I think she was really smart and really focusing on some of these specific categories where, you know, it's just so obvious that the government's breaking the law here. And I mean, I'll focus on the first one you mentioned, which,
“you know, maybe doesn't sound super important, but it really is. And I think it goes to the”
Department of Justice's walllessness right now, which is these foreign language documents. Again, like you said, this is a international investigation spending multiple countries in decades. You know, the Department of Justice just said, categorically, we don't review documents that aren't in English, which is pretty shocking. Which by the way, just just right there, I am sure that is not true in any other criminal investigation that they're involved with. Can you imagine? In another
international criminal case that they were investigating, they hit a box of documents that were in foreign language. We'll do it again for you right now. I mean, it's like, I think, but, you know, if you've worked in criminal law, like, if you've got Brady obligations to disclose the sculpatory information, that constitutional obligation doesn't go away just because it's in a different language. Like, you risk, you know, you risk losing your license with some of these sorts of things.
Anyways, judge ordered them to produce these foreign language documents. And the, the Department
of Justice's response was just incredible. They said, look, Judge, we told Congress that we weren't
going to follow this part of a law and Congress didn't do anything. So we okay with it. And it's like, that's not how the law any law works. You know, just by saying that you're going to break the
Law doesn't make it legal.
I'm going to rob this bodega next week. That doesn't make it legal when I do it. And it's the
“same reasoning here. So I was frankly kind of shocked that they, that they even bothered to make”
that kind of argument. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, we very surprised if it holds water with Judge Sullivan. Now Todd Blanche got all wrapped around his axle during his confirmation hearing as well. Let's just play one clip of him trying to answer why he's not meeting with Epstein survivors in about the production, play the clip. When President Trump signed the, the Epstein Transparency Act, um, the Department of Justice undertook a herculean task to review millions and millions of
potentially responsive files. Um, we were required under the statute to do this expeditiously and very
quickly, um, the Department of Justice did so. Um, we reviewed over six million pages. Many of
these pages were not responsive. And what I mean by that is we intentionally overcollected potentially responsive documents. So for example, there was a case going on in Florida at the same time as the Jeffrey Epstein case involving another defendant named Epstein having nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. When we collected materials, we collected everything involving Epstein, including the Epstein that I had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. So the review of materials included non-responsive
materials, um, the, the, the, the reviewers were qualified experienced attorneys within the department and the FBI. Um, they took pains to apply appropriate reductions. Um, there were mistakes that were made. And so approximately 1% of the reductions had to be fixed after a release of the Epstein files. Um, Chairman, we had dozens of lawyers on call, um, 24/7. Whenever we learned that any victims name had been improperly not redacted, we immediately took the document down and fixed it as
soon as we could. That doesn't excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility, but it does mean that we tried to fix them. We, we complied with the act, um, it required us complying with judges rules in New York, um, which required us to redact certain victims' names, even if the victim was also somebody who participated in criminal conduct, um, the judge did not allow judges in New York did not allow us to unredact those names. The, the other thing that we did, Chairman, is we made
unredacted versions of the entire database available to everybody in this body. And we did that
“because of transparency. Remember, for four years, there wasn't a peep about Jeffrey Epstein. Um,”
the Biden administration did nothing to be transparent about the Epstein case. We have been extraordinarily transparent and not only producing the records, but letting unredacted versions be available to anybody in this body. And if after reviewing unredacted materials, a member had concerns about why something was redacted, they brought them to, to the department's attention and, and, and we addressed that. So I, um, I, um, I want to make sure the American people know that
this administration when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein has been more transparent, um, than any past administration than Biden was or anybody else. And what we did is we, we complied with the law. That led to a begrudging meeting the second day of the confirmation hearing
between Todd Blanche and their survivors. But that went horribly. Here's what one of the survivors
had to say about the meeting. Play the clip. What is your sense of whether he had any shame for saying the day before the meeting that he would not meet with all of you, but when Mr. Tillis's vote became contingent on having the meeting, he was there. Did he say, well, I just said that because I didn't want to get tripped up, but I'm actually happy. Like, did he answer for saying you didn't want to meet with you guys 24 hours earlier? No, uh, there, that's actually a
really good word that you brought up, um, Nicole remorse. There was no remorse for any of the damage that was done. There was no remorse when we brought up. We've been trying to talk to you for eight
“months, nine months to tell you there are important files that should be looked at. There are plenty”
of investigative leads. There was no remorse in, uh, even when Annie said, hey, I know that my sister's report is missing part of the pages. Will you do an investigation? He said no. There was not going to be any further investigations. And we had to go through proper channels now. We had to go back to the FBI or we could talk to this other specialist. But basically, you wanted us to start all over again.
What does it make you feel about victims of child sex trafficking at the hands of powerful
Men today?
any kind of accountability for any kind of sexual harm is already excruciatingly difficult.
And you would think with six million files, by the way, he kept correcting us in saying three million
files. He said there are only three million files, not six million files. With that volume of evidence, we feel there's, you can't find an investigative lead in that. Then there's a problem with competence or there's decisions being made. And so it's very discouraging because right now, this man wants to be the attorney general of the United States. And he doesn't know what to do with six million files and how can anyone in this country ever feel safe that their case is going to be
prosecuted properly, investigative properly. When all of this is happening with the world watching
“Nicole, I mean, what happens when no one's looking?”
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half pages. And listen, I wasn't that impressed with the lorrying and the mind of Stan Woodward to begin with. But I'm certainly not now. This is what they say and I'll give you the translation, page two. Whereas the defendant's response to the order to show cause, that's the Trump side, set forth rational arguments. The plaintiff's response, that's Katie's side, is filled with hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to oppose punitive sanctions on the department for availing itself
of the process the court afforded it. No, the court told you either produced the documents or show cause, good faith basis, you know, supported by facts, usually by and half a day of its warm testimony, why you couldn't produce it. To this day, Todd Blanche and anybody in his department of Justice refuses to provide warm testimony to a judge. If I were on the other side of that judge's order, I would have provided affidavits and declarations. But of course, they didn't do it then.
And they're not even doing it now. We're just getting naked argument of counsel. This is what they say. The court has not ordered the immediate production of documents. Rather, the court has ordered the department to show cause if it declines to do so. They make it sound like it's an it's just an offer like an aspirational goal of the judge instead of a order by fiat of a federal judge on page two. They say and far from declaring that
the department will not abide by a court order. The department, meaning the department of justice, has accepted the court's offer. Oh, Billy you. You've accepted the court's offer.
“That sounds fantastic. We'll beat you for tea at four o'clock. Are you kidding me?”
That wasn't an offer. That was a requirement. It's going to piss off the judge. It's all I'm telling you now. They don't like the thousand dollars a day fine either. And they ended this way on page three. Again, it's not really a five page. It's really a three page response sign by Stan Woodward.
Ultimately, the department will continue to comply with all applicable disclosure laws,
but the department also needs to be afforded the ability to seek a pellet review of preliminary injunction orders. It believes to be an error. Okay. As soon as you get sanctioned, you can go take the European. For these reasons, any order of the court should not include
Contempt or sanctions relief, should include language recognizing the order a...
and should stay the effective date to allow the government to seek a pellet review. Here we go.
“In fact, on a hand, Brendan Ballou, Katie Fang's lawyer on, he's like, I don't even know why they”
haven't appealed yet. They haven't appealed because they know they have a losing argument. That's the answer. They know that if they filed the appeal and they get a bad response, which is likely, they lose sort of the political cover and the talking point. So they're going to stretch this out. Well, Judge, we'd like to gut peel, but you know, we're waiting on you and there's all these procedures and it's really hard. It's not really hard. Get a peel now. You could have appealed
when the judge initially entered his order in favor of Katie Fang plain and simple. Just to remind you, what Katie wrote in her filing and in seeking what she's seeking,
“she basically says that what they're doing is the opposite of transparency. I mean, they”
like to talk about where the most transparent department of justice about Epstein ever, of course, they don't abide by anything. They don't supply an affidavit. Here on page 8 of Katie's filing, they said, in his opposition to plaintiff's emotion for preliminary injunction,
the attorney general never once argued that any of the specific documents that were requested
by plaintiff would reveal victim information, for instance. Then hours after the court granted the motion, by the way, that's the point where they could have taken the appeal. The government issued a public statement attacking the court. Judge Sullivan's perverse interpretation appears to be focused on driving misleading headlines. This judge is suggesting DOJ violated the law, violate the law by unredacting victim names who as the department has always explained,
sadly became co-conspirators. It does a disservice to this court. Katie writes and to the victims in this matter by making the argument in the press and not briefing until the attorney general and not in briefing until the attorney general had already lost. And again, you see in the new filing, they don't attack the judge. They wouldn't dare. No, they leave that to their cowardness outside the court room in extra judicial statements. We're going to follow this closely. I'm going to
grab Katie Fang and ask her to join our show. Maybe even tonight on the intersection, which is on Tuesday night's APM my show on the Midest Touch Network. Tonight, special guest, Mark Elias talking about your vote. And the 13 times he's successfully defeated the Trump administration, 13 to know to try to steal voter data to weaponize the mechanisms around voter protection and try to suppress the vote. You're not going to want to miss my interview with Mark Elias tonight.
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