Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Federal Appeals Court Rejects DOJ Attempt to Delay Review of Foreign-Language Epstein Files (10/29/26)

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Federal Appeals Court Rejects DOJ Attempt to Delay Review of Foreign-Language Epstein Files (10/29/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice appealed
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a ruling that was made by Judge Sullivan that had
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: to do with the documents in question when it comes
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to the Katie Fang lawsuit. Well, the appeals court has
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: now made its ruling and the ruling went against Todd
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Blanche and the government. And what that means is, is
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: that the road is now clear for the DOJ records
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: that have been withheld to be looked at by the judge.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: And this all stems from the lawsuit that was filed
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: by Fang. And she has consistently scored victories in this lawsuit.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And honestly, I expect that to continue. And that's because
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like the Justice Department as a whole, led
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: by Todd Blanche, is engaging in a dereliction of duty.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: By not releasing these files. And now it's not only
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Judge Sullivan. But also the appeals court. For the District
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of Columbia. Who agrees. So at some point. You would
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: think that the Justice Department. Would get the hint. And
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: stop playing games. But instead of doing that. What do
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: they do? They double down. They dig in. And they
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: continue to file motion after motion. That gets swatted down.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: By the court. And when it comes to this lawsuit.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Filed by Katie Fang. It seems like every single ruling
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  Speaker 1: that we see is in her favor. So today, we
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  Speaker 1: have an article from the International Business Times and the headline,
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  Speaker 1: Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump's DOJ Bid to Halt Epstein
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  Speaker 1: Files Review, Says Government Failed to Justify the Delay. Well,
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  Speaker 1: there's no justifying it. They failed because it's unjustifiable. Imagine
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: looking at the court or the American people and trying
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: to explain away why you can't turn over files that
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  Speaker 1: we all know you have. Oh, they're duplicative. They're this,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: they're that. Well, cool. It's time for us to check
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  Speaker 1: your work. And remember, we're not talking about these being
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: publicly released. They're going to the mattresses over a judge
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: who wants to see them. So it's not like the
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: public is the one demanding that these documents be released. Well,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: we are, but it's an actual judge. there is a
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  Speaker 1: judge who is saying that these documents need to be released,
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  Speaker 1: and the federal government saying, no, we're not going to
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  Speaker 1: follow the law. And that's why this is now a
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  Speaker 1: situation that's making its way through the system. The author
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  Speaker 1: of this article is Stephanie Cruz. Federal Appeals Court on Wednesday,
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  Speaker 1: October 28, 2026, rejected U.S. Justice Department's bid to halt
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  Speaker 1: a court-ordered review of foreign language records in the Jeffrey
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  Speaker 1: Epstein files. ruling that the government had failed to show
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the irreparable harm needed to justify putting the work on hold.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Irreparable harm. If anyone's been harmed irreparably, it's the American
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: taxpayer and certainly the survivors, not the Justice Department. Every
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: issue that the Justice Department has, they created for themselves.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And when I say that, I mean by not being honest,
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  Speaker 1: by telling stories, by playing games, by not pursuing justice
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  Speaker 1: wherever it leads. The unsigned order from Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Florence Pan of the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit clears
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  Speaker 1: the way for a review first ordered in June. So
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  Speaker 1: Judge Sullivan's going to get a look at this now.
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  Speaker 1: And who knows what he sees? Who the hell knows
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  Speaker 1: what these documents contain? I mean, if there was nothing there,
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  Speaker 1: you would think that the Department of Justice would be like, sure, here,
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  Speaker 1: take the records, take a look at them. and we'll
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  Speaker 1: just keep it moving. But that's never the case, is it?
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  Speaker 1: And when you're hiding something, you don't want other people
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  Speaker 1: taking a look. And what else could it be at
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  Speaker 1: this point, besides that the Justice Department's hiding something and
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  Speaker 1: protecting people? It came in a lawsuit in which journalist
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  Speaker 1: Katie Fang accuses Attorney General Todd Blanche of breaching the
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  Speaker 1: Epstein Files Transparency Act through improper redactions, a missing redaction log,
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  Speaker 1: and withheld records. And all of that's true. That is
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  Speaker 1: literally what Todd Blanche is doing. Instead of just being honest,
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  Speaker 1: being transparent, he instead chooses to be a sniveling coward.
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  Speaker 1: To be somebody that's more worried about protecting Epstein's associates
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  Speaker 1: than pursuing justice. And somebody, in my opinion, wholly not
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  Speaker 1: qualified to be the Attorney General. The panel also rejected
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  Speaker 1: the concern that records could reach the public too soon.
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  Speaker 1: To the extent the government objects to producing documents before
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the merits of the case are resolved, production does not
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  Speaker 1: appear to be imminent, the judges wrote. Citing Fang's brief,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the judge said the department would release only documents it
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  Speaker 1: concludes must be disclosed by law. Anything it wants withheld
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: would return to court first, and disclosure possible only after
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: further litigation does not constitute irreparable harm. So in other words,
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  Speaker 1: shut the fuck up, produce the documents, and stop crying.
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  Speaker 1: That's basically what the appeals court told Todd Blanche. The
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  Speaker 1: department's appealing to rulings by U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan,
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  Speaker 1: his June 25th prelim injunction, and a September 16th order
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: enforcing it. Bang asked the court to dismiss the second appeal,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: arguing that the September order created no new obligation. The
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: panel left that motion to the judges, who will decide
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the merits. And I'm sure that ruling's gonna have the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: same outcome. I mean, how many judges have to take
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  Speaker 1: a look at this and tell the Department of Justice
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  Speaker 1: they're out of line? I guess every judge in the land.
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  Speaker 1: President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: of 2025, giving the department 30 days to publish its
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Epstein records. By January 30th, it had released about 3.5
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: million pages, and Blanche, then Deputy Attorney General, said its
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: review was over. Well, of course he did. Found that
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  Speaker 1: incriminating documentation... That pointed to his buddies and Donald Trump,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and that was a wrap. We went from the client
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: list is on my desk to move on in about.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: 3 seconds. And everybody that was part of that process
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  Speaker 1: needs to be held accountable. Every last person. And when
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I say held accountable, I mean investigated as part of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the cover-up. That month, the department told Congress it had
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  Speaker 1: not reviewed foreign language documents because it was not practicable.
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  Speaker 1: for the first-level reviewers to judge whether they were covered.
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  Speaker 1: The department has given no count, but survivors and advocacy
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  Speaker 1: organizations have told Miss Magazine the material runs to hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of thousands of documents, and I've heard the same thing. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's true or not, but I've
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: heard the same thing. And my guess is that that's
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the case. With as many different locales as Epstein and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: his buddies were adventuring in, well, what do you think?
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  Speaker 1: You think it was only English? Fang, a former MSNBC host,
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  Speaker 1: sued on the 27th of April. Sullivan's injunction ordered the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: review to begin by July 2nd. When that deadline passed,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Fang asked him to hold Blanche in contempt. And obviously,
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  Speaker 1: that would be the biggest slapdown that the Attorney General
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: could possibly get. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: get to that level. On September 16th, Sullivan called contempt
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  Speaker 1: premature but rejected the department's reasoning. Blanche cites no authority
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  Speaker 1: for the proposition that administrative inconvenience excuses him from meeting
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: his statutory obligations, he wrote. He set a new deadline
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of September 24th. The department asked for a partial stay
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: at 8.45 p.m. on Friday, September 18th. Sullivan denied it
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  Speaker 1: on September 21st because the department had not first consulted
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Fang's lawyers as local rules require, adding that he would
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: have refused on the merits anyway. He paused the deadline
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: so the department could go to the appeals court, which
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: it did a day later. And I told you at
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the time, I thought it was going to get slapped down.
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  Speaker 1: The appeals court really doesn't have time for this kind
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  Speaker 1: of nonsense. It's obvious that the Department of Justice is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: in the wrong, and it's obvious that Katie Fang has
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  Speaker 1: a case. So why keep screwing around? Why keep wasting
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: time and money? Provide the documents and shut the fuck up. There,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the department argued that Fang had no right to sue
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: because Congress chose not to include a private right of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: action in the law and warned that the order will
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: irreversibly alter the status quo, harm the department, and potentially
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: move this appeal. A bunch of legal gibberish. That's all
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  Speaker 1: that is. none of that has any merit, and it's
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  Speaker 1: all a bunch of nonsense, and I'm glad the court agreed.
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  Speaker 1: Fang's lawyers countered that a stay could delay the start
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  Speaker 1: of the review until more than a year after the
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  Speaker 1: law's deadline, leaving the material stale for her reporting. As
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  Speaker 1: of September 25th, Fang said not one foreign language document
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  Speaker 1: had been publicly produced. Under Sullivan's 21st September order, both
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: sides must file a joint notice recommending next steps within
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: three days of the appeal court's decision. The ruling does
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: not order any records released, and the department can still
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: contest redactions or withholdings before anything becomes public. Well, good luck.
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  Speaker 1: Judge Sullivan doesn't have a And while I don't think
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  Speaker 1: it's going to end up being contempt for Blanche, if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: anyone's going to hit him with it, it's Judge Sullivan.
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  Speaker 1: In June, after Sullivan granted the injunction, a Justice Department
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: spokesperson said, DOJ has produced all responsive documents and will
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: appeal this decision with confidence. Blanche, who has run the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: department since April, was confirmed as Attorney General on August 8th.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: All right, folks, well, there's the latest update on what's
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: going on with Katie Fang and the lawsuit against Todd Blanche.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And when the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche respond,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: we'll make sure to get that added to the catalog
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: as well. All the information that goes with this episode
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: can be found in the description box.