WASHINGTON — The Epstein Files Transparency Act sailed through Congress 427 to 1. On Thursday, the Justice Department chose a different path.
With the compliance deadline set by a federal judge expiring today, the Trump administration announced it would appeal rather than release a set of Epstein-related documents that a court found had been improperly redacted. The decision sets up a direct confrontation between U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who found the department likely in violation of its own law, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has declined to defend the department’s redaction decisions in court.
“The government ignored a law passed by Congress and then refused to defend its own conduct in court, all for the sake of protecting the rich and powerful,” Brendan Ballou of the Public Integrity Project, who represents journalist Katie Phang, said after Sullivan’s ruling last week. The DOJ’s response was sharper. A spokesperson called Sullivan’s ruling a “perverse interpretation” focused on “driving misleading headlines,” and said the department had produced all responsive documents.
Sullivan’s order, issued June 25, covers a specific set of documents that were either withheld or blacked out after the Justice Department’s January 2026 release of 3.5 million Epstein-related pages — a release the department’s own deputy attorney general called the final word on what existed. It wasn’t. Eight email exchanges between Epstein and others, with either the sender or recipient name removed, remained redacted. A draft indictment naming potential co-conspirators was released with those names stripped. A 2019 email that identified several co-conspirators was similarly obscured. And the FBI interview notes underlying several published summaries — including one documenting an unverified claim by a woman that Trump had assaulted her when she was 13 — were not released at all. Trump has denied the allegation.
Sullivan, appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and a presence on the federal judiciary for nearly four decades, found that Blanche had effectively conceded the merits of Phang’s lawsuit by failing to respond substantively to the court. “By not responding substantively, the Attorney General has conceded Ms. Phang’s merits arguments,” the 44-page ruling stated. The department rejected that framing. A spokesperson said Blanche “has not conceded anything.”
What Sullivan did not do was give the department a way out. When the DOJ asked him to pause his order so it could consider an appeal, he refused. The July 2 deadline stood.
Among the emails Sullivan ordered unredacted are exchanges referencing what one document described as a “torture video” and communications tied to Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, then the chief executive of Dubai’s DP World, in 2009. Epstein’s draft federal indictment — a document that was never used because prosecutors reached a plea deal instead — listed co-conspirators by name. Those names are still blacked out.
The legal question underneath the confrontation is narrow but consequential: whether the Epstein Files Transparency Act requires the release of underlying documents or only the summaries the department chose to publish. Sullivan concluded the law meant what it said. The DOJ argues that releasing the unredacted material would violate other statutes protecting victim identities — that the women who became co-conspirators in Epstein’s operation are the same people the redactions are meant to shield.
Phang, who filed her lawsuit in April after the January release left the disputed documents in shadow, has argued the two interests are not in conflict. The government has discretion over how it handles victim names. It cannot use that discretion as a blanket justification for removing names from a draft indictment — people who were never charged, whose identities the public has been waiting to learn since Epstein’s death in 2019.
The department’s appeal, if it clears the D.C. Circuit, could produce a stay that delays any disclosure indefinitely. If it does not, and the department still refuses to comply, Sullivan has a tool available: a show-cause order requiring Blanche to appear before him and explain the defiance. That would mark one of the more unusual judicial proceedings in recent memory — a sitting acting attorney general summoned to defend a decision to defy a transparency mandate his own president signed into law.
The same pressure has built inside Congress. On Wednesday, former Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Oversight Committee, where members pressed her on which names remained hidden and why. Bondi did not answer those questions directly. The House Oversight Committee has separately released documents from Epstein’s estate, adding to a body of material that is simultaneously enormous — 3.5 million pages, 2,000 videos, 180,000 images — and conspicuously incomplete at its edges.
What neither side has disclosed publicly is whether the department filed any documentation before Thursday’s deadline or whether it simply let the day pass on the theory that announcing an appeal is sufficient notice. Sullivan’s ruling did not specify what consequences attach to silence.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was designed to prevent exactly this kind of protracted legal dispute — to make the congressional command unambiguous after years of partial disclosures, redacted summaries, and litigation over what the public was owed. Whether the statute accomplished its purpose now depends on what the D.C. Circuit does next, and whether a judge known for holding government officials to account is willing to escalate if an appeal does not produce a stay.
The full redaction log — a document the department was required by law to maintain listing every item it chose to black out — was also among the records Sullivan ordered released. As of Thursday, that log remained unpublished.
