Trump's Former Lawyer Declared Epstein Compliance While DOJ Withheld FBI Notes Mentioning Trump

The Missing Records Behind the Announcement

On January 30, 2026, Todd Blanche co-signed a letter telling Congress that the Justice Department had met its release duties under the law ordering disclosure of the Epstein files.¹ Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, had been Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer, and Trump had signed the law.¹²³ The Department had withheld the handwritten FBI notes behind four interview reports concerning an allegation about Trump, calling the notes duplicative.⁴⁵ A federal judge rejected that explanation, and in October he ordered missing redacted copies of three sets of notes submitted again.⁶⁷

The charge is failure to carry out a public duty in a matter that named the President.³¹⁶ Trump signed the disclosure law on November 19, 2025.³⁸ He had nominated Blanche as Deputy Attorney General, and the Senate had confirmed him.⁹ Blanche signed the January letter with Attorney General Pam Bondi.¹

Five days before he signed the law, ABC News reported, Trump posted that he would "be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate" Epstein's connections to Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman and JPMorgan Chase.¹⁰ Bondi assigned U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the investigation that day, writing, "Thank you, Mr. President."¹⁰

Congress had passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with a 427-to-1 House vote and unanimous Senate consent.¹¹⁸ The law gave the Department thirty days, a deadline that fell on December 19, as Judge Emmet G. Sullivan later held.³⁴ It allowed withholding on five grounds, among them victims' private information and the temporary protection of an active investigation.³ Sparing a public figure was not one of them.³

Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. 119-38, §2(b)(1) — Prohibited Grounds for Withholding³

No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.

The Department's February report denied withholding on any of those grounds.⁴

The FBI Notes Mentioning Trump

Journalist Katie Phang sued Blanche, as Acting Attorney General, on April 27, 2026, challenging the withholding of the handwritten notes behind four FBI interview reports.¹²¹³⁴ In his June opinion granting her a preliminary injunction, Sullivan identified the reports through Phang's description: a victim's allegation that Epstein introduced her to Trump when she was about 13 and that Trump assaulted her.⁴ The ruling concerned disclosure and did not adjudicate the allegation.⁴

The Department said the handwritten notes were substantially similar to the typed reports and therefore duplicative, and that handwriting increased the risk of exposing victims' private information because automated quality checks were harder.⁵ Sullivan answered on September 16: the handwritten notes were not duplicates of the interview reports, and the Department's review protocol did not instruct reviewers to withhold substantially similar documents.⁶ He noted that Phang had identified nearly 100 additional examples of handwritten interview notes the Department had released.⁶

Sullivan ordered Blanche to submit redacted and unredacted versions for his private review.⁶ The Department reported hand-delivering unredacted notes and the corresponding unredacted reports on September 24.¹⁴ On October 9, Sullivan accepted its documented explanation for not supplying the notes behind one report; for the other three, it had supplied unredacted notes but no redacted ones.⁷ He ordered the redacted notes submitted a second time, for his private review, by noon on October 16, a deadline still ahead as of October 10.⁷

What the Compliance Letter Left Undone

The January letter counted nearly 3.5 million pages released, a substantial disclosure.¹ The same letter listed work not done: foreign-language documents and technically incompatible files remained unreviewed and unproduced, and first-level reviewers, it said, could not practicably determine whether the foreign-language documents were responsive.¹ The Department's obligations, the letter said, would be completed after its report to Congress and publication of its written justifications for redactions.¹

Sullivan's June injunction required the Department to begin reviewing and producing potentially covered foreign-language material by July 2.¹³ The Department replied that the court should not override Congress's acceptance of its explanation, and that Congress had supplied no additional resources or appropriations; by the letter's count, more than 500 attorneys and reviewers had worked on the review.⁵¹ In September, Sullivan rejected the rationale: the Department cited no authority making administrative inconvenience an excuse for noncompliance, or making congressional silence an amendment to the law.⁶ He declined to find civil contempt, calling it premature.⁶ On September 21 he denied the Department's request for a partial stay but temporarily paused the foreign-language requirement so it could seek one from the D.C. Circuit, whose public docket listed no decision on the request as of October 10.¹⁵¹⁶

The letter also reported approximately 200,000 pages redacted or withheld under privileges, including attorney-client communications, that the Act's five listed grounds do not expressly include.¹³ The Department argued that Congress must speak clearly to displace existing privileges and had not done so; Sullivan's orders did not decide whether the privilege claims were valid.⁵⁴⁶⁷

The law also required the Department to justify every redaction in writing and publish the justifications in the Federal Register.³ It published a notice on August 27, 2026, more than eight months after the deadline Sullivan identified, republishing the February 14 report to Congress with its summary of redactions and their legal grounds.¹⁷⁴⁶ The Department had argued that the Act set no publication deadline.⁵ Phang argued that a general summary did not explain each redaction as the law required; her request had challenged the absence of a notice, so Sullivan ended his demand on that point and left the notice's adequacy for later proceedings.⁶ The Department won that procedural issue.⁶

The Department's Promise and the Victims' Account

Blanche promised that protecting victims was the highest priority for Trump, the Attorney General, the FBI and the Department; the Department quoted the promise in its July response to the court.⁵ It said it had solicited victims' names from their lawyers, who supplied more than 1,200 names of victims or relatives for redaction.⁵

The result fell short of the promise.⁵⁴ On February 2, 2026, the Department acknowledged that several thousand documents and media files may have included identifying information and said it had removed them.⁴ Victims' lawyers said exposure began with the December 20 production and had escalated into suffering and fear for personal safety; they described the harm as irreversible.⁴

The Redactions the Court Upheld

The strongest defense of redaction is the danger of exposing victims again.³⁴ The Act expressly protects victims' identifying and medical information; the Crime Victims' Rights Act protects their dignity and privacy, and the Privacy Act can impose civil and criminal consequences for unauthorized disclosures.³¹⁸¹⁹ On July 30, 2026, a victim filing as Jane Doe moved to intervene solely to preserve the redaction of her identity.²⁰

Sullivan first found, on August 6, that the Department had supplied assertions instead of the documentation he had ordered to show that certain redacted names belonged to victims.²¹ He accepted several victim-name redactions in September after reviewing the Department's explanations and documentation, and on October 9 he upheld three more after private inspection of supporting documents.⁶⁷ He also ended his demand for explanations about two private email addresses, leaving the dispute over the Privacy Act and the disclosure statute for later proceedings.⁶ And he discharged his demand for explanations about redactions he identified as the names of a government attorney and law enforcement personnel and their email addresses.⁶

The Department's July filing said three of four names redacted under a co-conspirator heading belonged to victims; it removed the redaction of Leslie Groff's name because she had not asserted victim status.⁵ The filing pointed to corrections already described in January, before the June injunction.⁵¹

Grand-jury secrecy, which courts impose, also limited what the Department could release before the Act, and there the Department sought release.²²²³ It asked three judges to unseal material in 2025, and all three denied the requests.²³²⁴²⁵ Among the post-enactment grants, Judge Rodney Smith granted unsealing in Florida and Judge Analisa Torres granted it in the Noel proceedings; both held that the later, more specific statute superseded Rule 6(e).²²²⁶

Blanche Personally Questioned Maxwell About Trump

On July 24, 2025, before the disclosure law existed, Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell under a proffer agreement.²⁷³ Maxwell's lawyer had approached him about a meeting, by Blanche's account.²⁷ He told her the agreement was not a cooperation deal and promised nothing for meeting; her statements could not be used in the government's case in chief, but she could be prosecuted for false statements.²⁷ Blanche also said the government could use her statements to cross-examine her or a witness if they later testified differently in a retrial or future criminal case.²⁷

Blanche asked about Trump's relationship with Maxwell and Epstein, and whether she had ever seen Trump receive a massage; she said she never had.²⁷ Maxwell also said she had never witnessed Trump in an inappropriate setting and that he had behaved as a gentleman whenever she was with him.²⁷

Transcript, Interview of Ghislaine Maxwell, United States Department of Justice (page 105)²⁷

Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me.

The Department published the interview.²⁸²⁹ The concern is Blanche's personal role: the President's former criminal defense lawyer was questioning a convicted Epstein associate about the President.²²⁷³⁰ The Department's rule requires an official to step aside from criminal investigations or prosecutions involving specified personal or political ties unless participation is authorized; Sullivan did not decide whether it applied to this interview.³¹⁴⁶ Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wrote that an FBI agent or a member of the local U.S. Attorney's Office would ordinarily conduct such a meeting, not the Deputy Attorney General.³⁰

Roughly a week after the two-day meeting, Maxwell, who was serving a twenty-year sentence, moved from low-security FCI Tallahassee to the minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas; ABC News reported the move with Bureau of Prisons confirmation and said the reason was not made clear.³²³⁰ The sequence does not establish a deal; it raised an oversight question.³²³⁰ Whitehouse wrote that the Bureau's default policy required people with sex-offense histories like Maxwell's to remain at least in low-security facilities, with an approved waiver ordinarily needed for transfer to minimum security.³⁰ He demanded the transfer and waiver records and asked whether political favors were involved.³⁰

Congress and a Court Had to Test the Compliance Claim

House Oversight subpoenaed Bondi in March 2026 about compliance with the Act, and the Department's Inspector General announced an audit of the release process in April.³³³⁴ Sullivan's preliminary injunction in June found irreparable harm from denying Phang timely information amid intense public interest and the approaching midterm elections.⁴

The Department argued that the Act created no private right to sue, that Congress should oversee compliance, and that FOIA offered Phang an adequate alternative remedy.³⁵⁵ Sullivan held that the administrative-law suit could proceed and that FOIA did not impose the same mandatory disclosure duties.⁴ Because the Department had challenged his authority to hear the case without answering Phang's claims that it had violated the Act, he treated those claims as conceded in that preliminary ruling; the Department's July filing expressly denied any violation.⁴⁵

The Department had given Congress substantial access: the January letter invited members to inspect unredacted portions of the production under confidentiality arrangements, and in July the Department said multiple members had done so.¹⁵ Before the statute, House Oversight had obtained 33,295 pages from DOJ under an August subpoena and published them on September 2, 2025.³⁶ That access counts in the Department's favor, but it did not replace the Act's public-release and justification duties.³¹

On July 15, Republican Representative Thomas Massie, an original cosponsor of the disclosure law, introduced a bill that would let victims, state authorities and members of Congress sue over the Department's noncompliance.⁸³⁷ He said the Department had "flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA's disclosure requirements" and alleged that it was heavily redacting the files it released.³⁸ As of October 10, the bill's official status record still listed its July 15 referral to the House Judiciary Committee as the latest action.³⁹

The President's Duty and the Charge

The Constitution makes faithful execution of the laws the President's duty and authorizes impeachment and removal for high crimes and misdemeanors; Hamilton described impeachment as reaching abuse or violation of public trust.⁴⁰⁴¹ The Supreme Court recognized absolute criminal immunity for presidential dealings with the Justice Department within his exclusive investigative and prosecutorial authority, even when an improper purpose is alleged; that criminal immunity does not cancel the Department's disclosure duties or the Constitution's impeachment provision.⁴²³⁴⁰

Trump signed the disclosure command and chose the former defense lawyer who helped declare the Department compliant; his responsibility here rests on those two acts.³⁹²¹ Sullivan's orders do not find that Trump personally ordered withholding to protect himself. The January 4 review protocol contained no Trump-specific flagging instruction: it told reviewers to list any government officials and politically exposed people named in released materials, and it exempted presidentially nominated, Senate-confirmed positions from government-employee name redactions.⁴⁶⁷⁴³

His Department declared compliance while it withheld notes on a rationale the judge rejected and left foreign-language records unreviewed, and victims' lawyers described irreversible harm from exposure of identifying information.¹⁶⁴ This belongs on an impeachment site because it tests the President's obligation to execute a law in a matter involving his own name, through an officer who had represented him personally.⁴⁰³²¹⁴