Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / Judge Emmet Sullivan Warns DOJ Over Epstein Records Compliance (8/14/26)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
- 0:03Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. Of all the judges that the DOJ could
- 0:08Speaker 1: have been assigned for their case against Keeddy Fang, they
- 0:13Speaker 1: just so happened to get assigned to Judge Emmett Sullivan.
- 0:16Speaker 1: And one thing that we know about Emmett Sullivan is
- 0:19Speaker 1: that he has no problem sanctioning the government when the
- 0:23Speaker 1: government's out of line. Just ask the prosecutors that were
- 0:26Speaker 1: overseeing the Ted Stevens case in Alaska back in twenty ten,
- 0:31Speaker 1: twenty eleven. They ended up having their case overturned because
- 0:36Speaker 1: they weren't honest during the process and Judge Sullivan caught
- 0:40Speaker 1: them and that led to the conviction against Stevens being overturned.
- 0:44Speaker 1: So the one thing that we know for sure is
- 0:46Speaker 1: that Judge Sullivan will take that next step. Now, of course,
- 0:51Speaker 1: he's not ready to do that just yet. However, in
- 0:54Speaker 1: his latest filing, he's worn the DOJ to stop playing games.
- 1:00Speaker 1: So today we have an article from USA Today and
- 1:02Speaker 1: the headline that's a promise. Judge warns DOJ of penalties
- 1:08Speaker 1: on Epstein files. This article was authored by Asha Bogchi,
- 1:15Speaker 1: a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit on the release
- 1:18Speaker 1: of the Epstein files. Warned the Justice Department lawyers on
- 1:22Speaker 1: August thirteenth that he could penalize them and put a
- 1:25Speaker 1: stain on their professional records if they don't comply with
- 1:28Speaker 1: his orders. I'm not interested in doing that at all,
- 1:31Speaker 1: but I will do it to ensure that justice is
- 1:33Speaker 1: administered fairly, Judge M. G. Sullivan said. Sullivan made the
- 1:38Speaker 1: comments at the end of a hearing dealing with whether
- 1:40Speaker 1: the DOJ has complied with both his orders and a
- 1:43Speaker 1: transparency law requiring it to release files on convicted sex
- 1:48Speaker 1: offender Jeffrey Epstein. That's not a threat, that's a promise,
- 1:53Speaker 1: Sullivan added. And again, look, he's not the kind of
- 1:56Speaker 1: guy that's half steppin. We've already seen him do it. Now.
- 2:00Speaker 1: Does that mean he's going to do it again here?
- 2:02Speaker 1: Of course not. But Todd Blanche and his band of
- 2:06Speaker 1: merry men, they better play ball because eventually they're going
- 2:11Speaker 1: to run into a judge who has had enough. And
- 2:13Speaker 1: when that day finally comes, there's going to be severe
- 2:17Speaker 1: penalties for everybody that was involved. Because I have no
- 2:21Speaker 1: doubt in my mind at all that everybody involved here
- 2:25Speaker 1: is engaging in contempt, and they're all involved in a
- 2:28Speaker 1: cover up. And of course, one of the most frustrating
- 2:30Speaker 1: parts of the whole entire ordeal is that the Epstein
- 2:34Speaker 1: Files Transparency Act was supposed to talk about the cover
- 2:37Speaker 1: up too, but instead all we're seeing is the cover
- 2:40Speaker 1: up accelerated. Sullivan was discussing potentially holding DOJ attorneys in
- 2:45Speaker 1: civil contempt, a step that can mean imposing jail time
- 2:48Speaker 1: or fines to force someone to comply with a court order.
- 2:52Speaker 1: A contempt finding could follow the lawyers in their later
- 2:54Speaker 1: careers if they seek new jobs, such as a judicial position.
- 2:59Speaker 1: Sullivan noted, Yeah, it goes into their file. So if
- 3:02Speaker 1: they're looking for some kind of federal judge position or
- 3:06Speaker 1: some sort of job with the court, that's going to
- 3:09Speaker 1: be in their file forever, and they'll have to explain
- 3:12Speaker 1: why they didn't want to release the information that the
- 3:14Speaker 1: law required them to release. The warning was the latest
- 3:17Speaker 1: setback for the Justice Department over its handling of the
- 3:20Speaker 1: files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Since the Justice
- 3:25Speaker 1: Department's release of millions of pages of files in January,
- 3:29Speaker 1: many with extensive redactions, some of Epstein's accusers have alleged
- 3:33Speaker 1: that the DOJ is covering up potential crimes by Epstein's associates,
- 3:38Speaker 1: accusations that the Department has strongly denied, well, it denials
- 3:43Speaker 1: one thing, showing us actual evidence is a whole lass other.
- 3:47Speaker 1: And even Helen Keller can see that the government is
- 3:50Speaker 1: not being truthful with the American people. And they're not
- 3:53Speaker 1: even trying to be slick anymore. They're just ham handed
- 3:56Speaker 1: at this point because they believe enough people have moved on.
- 3:59Speaker 1: They think that they've done a good enough job of
- 4:02Speaker 1: sowing the seeds of turning this into a hoax. But
- 4:05Speaker 1: unfortunately for them, there is way too much evidence when
- 4:08Speaker 1: it comes to this story. So they can call it
- 4:11Speaker 1: whatever they want, but the reality is what it is,
- 4:15Speaker 1: and the reality is that this is a cover up.
- 4:18Speaker 1: No one's in trouble at the moment, Sullivan made clear,
- 4:21Speaker 1: but he said he would be remissed if he didn't
- 4:23Speaker 1: share that he held DOJ lawyers in contempt once before,
- 4:27Speaker 1: after presiding over a criminal trial for Alaska Republican Senator
- 4:31Speaker 1: Ted Stevens in the two thousands. Those lawyers initially failed
- 4:35Speaker 1: to provide documents he had ordered them to turn over,
- 4:38Speaker 1: and the government. They can't withhold evidence from the defense,
- 4:43Speaker 1: and if they do, it's a Brady violation. And then
- 4:46Speaker 1: that's when things get real messy for the people that
- 4:48Speaker 1: are engaging in that bullshit. You can end up getting
- 4:51Speaker 1: sanctioned and worse. And that's what we saw in the
- 4:54Speaker 1: two thousands because the lawyers for the government, they were
- 4:59Speaker 1: playing loose with the try and they didn't hand over
- 5:01Speaker 1: all the information that they were supposed to hand over,
- 5:04Speaker 1: and that of course led to Judge Sullivan making the
- 5:07Speaker 1: decision that he made to hold them in contempt. I
- 5:10Speaker 1: don't look forward to doing it again, by any stretch
- 5:13Speaker 1: of the imagination, Sullivan said. The Justice Department didn't immediately
- 5:17Speaker 1: respond to a request for comment. That's pretty typical, right,
- 5:20Speaker 1: They're not going to say much. What are they going
- 5:22Speaker 1: to say. They know they're in the wrong. So what
- 5:25Speaker 1: they're going to do is get together, brainstorm, and come
- 5:28Speaker 1: up with some other lay mass excuse as to why
- 5:31Speaker 1: they can't follow the law like the rest of us.
- 5:35Speaker 1: The remark came at the end of a hearing Sullivan
- 5:38Speaker 1: called in a lawsuit brought by Kady Fang, a lawyer
- 5:41Speaker 1: and independent journalist who previously hosted a show on MSNBC.
- 5:46Speaker 1: Fang has argued in her lawsuit that the DOJ didn't
- 5:49Speaker 1: comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required it
- 5:53Speaker 1: to release unclassified DJ files related to Epstein with limited exceptions. Well,
- 6:01Speaker 1: they sure were liberal with those limited exceptions, weren't they.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Oh well, let's just hold this one back. Oh, this
- 6:07Speaker 1: one's duplicative. Oh on this pile over here, that's just
- 6:10Speaker 1: national defense, no big deal, national security. Who cares no
- 6:15Speaker 1: intelligence ties? Jeffrey Epstein, just a regular old dude with
- 6:19Speaker 1: some proclivities who like to diddle himself. That's the bullshit
- 6:22Speaker 1: they want you to believe. That's their story, cut and dry,
- 6:26Speaker 1: and everything else that followed just a big ass coincidence, folks.
- 6:30Speaker 1: Sullivan called the hearing after writing in an August eighth
- 6:33Speaker 1: court order that the Justice Department didn't comply with the
- 6:36Speaker 1: previous order to provide him with documents he can use
- 6:39Speaker 1: to verify that the DOJ properly redacted certain Epstein files.
- 6:44Speaker 1: The DOJ said the redactions were concealing the identities of
- 6:48Speaker 1: potential victims. Well, that would be a first. That hasn't
- 6:52Speaker 1: been the priority. Now, I know they said that's the priority,
- 6:55Speaker 1: But let's be very real, Okay, The priority as all
- 7:00Speaker 1: been control the blast radius. And if that means not
- 7:03Speaker 1: telling the truth, so be it, or stretching the truth,
- 7:06Speaker 1: or not telling the whole truth, then they're more than
- 7:09Speaker 1: willing to do that. And this has been the same
- 7:11Speaker 1: uphill battle that we've been fighting for over seven years.
- 7:14Speaker 1: And it's always meet the new boss, same as the
- 7:17Speaker 1: old boss. Right, whether it's Merrick Garland or Todd Blanche
- 7:21Speaker 1: or Pam Bondy, doesn't matter. Nobody is interested in the
- 7:26Speaker 1: real Epstein truth, at least nobody in power. At the
- 7:30Speaker 1: start of the August thirteenth hearing, DOJ lawyer Andrew Block
- 7:33Speaker 1: said the department tried to comply with the previous order,
- 7:36Speaker 1: but that he had also brought a binder of fresh
- 7:40Speaker 1: material to the hearing, which he provided to Sullivan. Sullivan
- 7:44Speaker 1: also questioned Block about the DJ felling to provide them
- 7:47Speaker 1: with FBI notes from interviews of potential witnesses linked to Epstein.
- 7:53Speaker 1: The department said it didn't provide the notes because they
- 7:55Speaker 1: are substantially similar to typewritten reports that have been provided,
- 8:00Speaker 1: and because providing the notes, which are handwritten, would risk
- 8:03Speaker 1: inadvertently disclosing victim information translation, if we turn that stuff over,
- 8:08Speaker 1: we'd have to tell you the agents that we're working
- 8:10Speaker 1: on the case, and then you might be able to
- 8:12Speaker 1: talk to them and get some accountability. That's what it
- 8:15Speaker 1: really means. But I don't think they have a leg
- 8:17Speaker 1: to stand on there. The EFTA calls for people to
- 8:21Speaker 1: be held accountable. So how can we hold people accountable
- 8:25Speaker 1: if we don't know who signed what? If we don't
- 8:27Speaker 1: know who was involved with what email? You mean to
- 8:31Speaker 1: tell me that all these agents that were involved in
- 8:34Speaker 1: these emails, all these people from the Justice Department shouldn't
- 8:38Speaker 1: have their names outed. Why not? If there's nothing to
- 8:41Speaker 1: hide and everything's on the up and up, what's the
- 8:43Speaker 1: big deal? However, Sullivan said at the August thirteenth hearing
- 8:49Speaker 1: that the explanation wasn't good enough. He said that he
- 8:52Speaker 1: needed the notes to confirm that what the DOJ is
- 8:54Speaker 1: saying is accurate one hundred percent. Nobody trusts you, not
- 8:59Speaker 1: even the court. I mean, we have a judge here
- 9:02Speaker 1: who doesn't trust the DJ. And you think that the
- 9:05Speaker 1: rest of us should the rest of us should just
- 9:07Speaker 1: pack it in and say, you know what the DOJ
- 9:09Speaker 1: they're doing a great job here. They're not covering this up.
- 9:13Speaker 1: They're actually at the forefront trying to give us transparency
- 9:16Speaker 1: and truth. What a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. There has
- 9:22Speaker 1: never been a bigger roadblock than what we're seeing right now.
- 9:27Speaker 1: Imagine having all this information at your fingertips at the
- 9:30Speaker 1: DOJ and still refusing to do anything with it, refusing
- 9:35Speaker 1: to step up to the plate and do your job correctly,
- 9:39Speaker 1: even when the judge is asking you. You're turning up
- 9:44Speaker 1: your nose and acting like you don't have to comply.
- 9:47Speaker 1: At some point though, they have to comply, and if
- 9:51Speaker 1: they don't, there needs to be penalties. And one of
- 9:55Speaker 1: the few judges that I know has no fear of
- 9:58Speaker 1: handing out those penalties is EMMITTT. Sullivan. So I hope
- 10:03Speaker 1: that the DOJ and Todd Blanche continue to try him.
- 10:08Speaker 1: All I'm trying to do is ensure compliance with the
- 10:10Speaker 1: Epstein Act, Sullivan said at the hearing, And I really
- 10:14Speaker 1: hope he can, because somebody needs to step up and
- 10:17Speaker 1: kick these dudes directly in the sack, because enough is enough.
- 10:22Speaker 1: They've gotten away with a lot of bullshit over the
- 10:24Speaker 1: last year, and it's high time that somebody steps up
- 10:27Speaker 1: and stops the nonsense. Will that be Judge Sullivan. We'll
- 10:31Speaker 1: have to wait and see, and once we get some
- 10:34Speaker 1: more information, like usual, we'll get it added to the catalog.
- 10:38Speaker 1: All the information that goes with this episode can be
- 10:40Speaker 1: found in the description box