Judge Threatens DOJ Contempt Over Epstein Files

A federal judge warned the Justice Department on Thursday that its lawyers could be held in contempt of court for defying his orders to explain why parts of the Jeffrey Epstein files are still being withheld.

"I just don't want anyone to be blindsided if we have to go down that road," Washington, D.C. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said, according to The Independent. "It's not a threat. It's a promise. I have a job to administer justice, and I take that very seriously."

The hearing came in a lawsuit brought by journalist Katie Phang against Attorney General Todd Blanche, who accuses the Trump administration of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act by failing to release all the files in its possession or adequately explain the ones it kept back.

What the Fight Is About

The central dispute is over FBI interview notes — the handwritten pages behind the typed witness reports agents file on a form known as a "302."

The department told the court the handwritten notes were "duplicative" of the typewritten reports and pointed to a January attorney general memo as the basis for that decision, according to an account of the hearing published by AlterNet.

Sullivan pressed on how he was supposed to verify that. "We can't just take at face value that the notes are substantially similar," he said, per AlterNet's account. "The only way to do this is to have the evidence."

The department's lawyer replied that it is normally "afforded the presumption of regularity" — that courts usually accept its rationale.

Among the challenged documents are investigators' interview notes from a woman who made unsubstantiated assault claims about Trump, which department officials deemed duplicative of the typed reports. The president has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing, and appearing in the Epstein files does not suggest otherwise. Other redactions allegedly cover the names of Epstein's interlocutors and potential co-conspirators, as well as survivors' names — which Sullivan's order did not require the department to release.