Trump and Congress in Hiding as Epstein Scandal Developments Turn Against Them

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2:01Michael Popok:Fox News goes beyond the headlines, bringing you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective. At home or on the go, stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox One. Download today. Welcome to a special edition of Legal AF. There are tremendous developments in the world of the Epstein survivors, the Trump administration, both in legislation that has been proposed and looks like it's going to end up on the House floor. in the developments in Katie Fang's lawsuit before Judge Sullivan, and then, of course, how Kash Patel was grilled with an inch of his life or beyond in the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing about the Epstein files, particularly ones that Katie Fang is seeking on behalf of herself as a reporter and on behalf of all moral people and the survivors in her case.

3:02Michael Popok:And so I wanted to bring back to the show somebody who's become a regular talking about this case and others, Brendan Blue, the executive director of Public Integrity Project and Katie Fang's counsel, along with his team on that particular case, and kind of bring everybody together here on this Friday about all of these amazing developments. Brendan, welcome. Thanks, as always, for having me. I will tell you that I interviewed recently, like last 24 hours, Danny Bensky, who's one of the leaders of the survivor movement, who thanks every day, everything that you're doing on her behalf. And she thinks in her own mind, and she's on Capitol Hill, she goes to the midterm convention, she's in the court, she opposed Todd Blanche's confirmation, testified against him.

3:53Michael Popok:She feels like there's a wind of change that's happening and that it's certainly very, very comforting to her. She just sees a series of things like Leon Black's contempt referral to the Department of Justice and things happening with Katie's case. She feels real justice may be around the corner. Let's take it from your perspective, and I'll give the backdrop. right before an early recess break. Sure, Congress goes on complete holiday 47, 46 days before the midterms to avoid what looks to be a discharge petition that has the requisite votes, what we now call Epstein File Transparency Act 2, which will, from what I understand, which will give to state attorneys general and prosecutors the ability and members of Congress to have standing to do exactly what Katie Fang is doing right now as a reporter, which is to go after the attorney general for his violations of the Epstein-Filed Transparency Act.

4:58Michael Popok:There's some other elements of it. Victims and survivors get to see unredacted documents relating to them and the rest. That is gaining momentum. And if he's got the 218 votes, Representative Massey and Kana with four Republicans joining. Again, I think this is all because of the great success that you've had with Katie in your case, an uninterrupted string of success, including orders that came out earlier this week. From your perspective, do you get a sense that you're not only winning for your client in court and for the survivors, but there seems to be a momentum building around supporting the Epstein survivors.

5:43Yeah, you know, it's kind of you to say that, and I think I'd agree. You know, the analogy that I keep going back to is Watergate. And I think, you know, what's going on with the Epstein files is very different than, you know, the scandals around the Nixon administration. But what you did see is this multi-pronged effort to get accountability for the president there, where it wasn't just that you had Woodward and Bernstein doing, you know, incredible investigative reporting. You had House and Senate investigation. You had private litigation that was going on. You had a DOJ investigation that was going on.

6:16And so, again, I don't want to draw sort of like a facile comparison between the two, but what you do see is this sort of multi-prong approach to trying to get transparency and accountability here and an approach where each prong sort of builds on the last in a way that's very helpful. So in that sense, it's really encouraging. Yeah.

6:37Michael Popok:And I want to get into the nitty gritty of what the judge ruled, a couple of orders that came out. And when our audience has been following it through you and your briefings, we'll understand what we're talking about when we tell them the judge has ordered that an answer finally be filed. No, they don't get another shot at a motion to dismiss. Now, as we came on the air today on Friday, a notice of appeal, which I guess we've been waiting for, was filed about one of the particular orders we're going to talk about late last night. But let me first read from Judge Sullivan's order about two topics that were, I think, at the heart of your case, the preliminary injunction heart of your case, which is the FBI interview notes handwritten about that person who claims that when she was 13 she was sexually abused by Donald Trump.

7:28Michael Popok:Trump, we want the handwritten notes. You're going after the handwritten notes. The judge has now ruled about the handwritten notes and about the foreign language documents that the DOJ just said, well, we didn't produce them because it's really hard to, we didn't translate them. Like, no. So he made a ruling about both. Let me stay on the FBI interview notes for a minute and first read what the judge has ordered. This is on page 12, 13, et cetera, of his order. The court rejects the defendant's assertion that the underlying handwritten FBI notes that form the basis for certain FD302 reports, those are the official FBI reports, were properly withheld because they're substantially similar and duplicative of the typewritten reports.

8:12Michael Popok:First, he hoists them up on their own review protocol and says, well, you got a review protocol. I don't see anywhere in there where it says if they're substantially similar, you get to not produce them. He also just declares they're not the same document. OK, they're not duplicative. I don't even have to see them to know that they're not duplicative, but I do want to see them. So he has ordered that they produce to him for in-camera review all these dozens and dozens of handwritten pages of the four separate interviews of that particular person. What was your reaction to the judge doing that?

8:48Michael Popok:And do you think, you know, how close do you think we are to getting those released to Katie, to the public and to the survivors? A lot closer than we were yesterday or the day before. So, you know, just to kind of lay out sort of the basic framework of how this works at the FBI. So you use the phrase FD302. This is like the standard form that the FBI uses to record interview notes. They say we talk to such and such a person. Here's what they say. always with the FD302 are the accompanying handwritten notes. So that's the raw notes that you took during the interview, which sometime match the, you know, the typewritten FD302.

9:26Sometimes they don't, or they contain information that isn't in the summary. So, you know, it is really important to get the handwritten notes because it may contain information that the typewritten ones don't. And again, these are documents that allegedly deal with the president. them. And this administration has been absolutely committed to trying to make sure that they don't get released. So now once they're produced to Judge Sullivan, he's going to do, as you said, what's called an in-camera review. So he's going to review them himself and decide if they can get produced or not. I think the allegations that this was too onerous to review, which is sort of what DOJ had been arguing the whole time, just doesn't make any sense.

10:07And I think Judge Sullivan and saw past that, you know, he's been a judge since I think the Reagan administration. He's been doing this for a long time, probably has a lot of familiarity with FBI procedures given that he's a federal judge in DC. So I think we're a lot closer to those things getting released. But I'll also just say, you know, this is about something much larger than just those specific documents. You know, this is a very small sliver of an enormous universe of documents that haven't been released. And so if we can get these documents released, you know, it's not necessarily about what they specifically say, but it will show that DOJ had a pattern of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act when it was reviewing documents.

10:52So it's further evidence of getting broader relief to make sure that they actually comply with the law.

10:58Michael Popok:Yeah. And that reminds our audience that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The preliminary injunction that you brought is just, you're just, right now it's just a battle over five categories or so of documents. The main lawsuit, which is the underlying lawsuit for which you want a permanent injunction in ruling by the judge is about millions of pages and about a monitor, likely a former federal judge being put in charge of a look back about what they did and what they should have done in further production. And this would give you another fact, another data point to use with the judge when you get around to asking for your remedial relief or him using his inherent authority to appoint a monitor, right?

11:41Exactly, exactly. So this is all building up to that ultimate remedy.

11:45Michael Popok:Yeah. And it was interesting, before I get to a clip of Senator Whitehouse on this very issue, The judge also reminded them when they said, well, judge, if you do an in-camera review of these pages, it'll set a terrible precedent. He said, that ship has sailed. I've already done, you've already submitted to me documents for an in-camera review, which you didn't see. In other words, you've waived that argument. I assume that's what he's trying to say. The, and back to your point about the deviations that are likely between the handwritten notes and the typed, there's an editorial decision that is made by the agent to put in and not put in to reframe or rephrase what he or she wrote in handwriting.

12:34Michael Popok:And who put pressure on them if there was pressure to do it? if you see a line in the handwritten, I'm making this up now, that's devastating for Donald Trump, but you don't see it in the writing, then you have a pathway to get that agent before a judge or in discovery and ask, did you make that decision? Who made that decision to leave that line out? It's a whole nother trail that you would run down, right? Yeah, you know, and independent of those specific documents, because I try not to get anybody particularly worked up about one document that's going to be, you know, sort of explosive or anything like that.

13:13It's about the entire practice that DOJ had here about, you know, suppressing or refusing to release documents that, you know, were that seemed inconvenient to release. And I think if you sort of read between the lines of a lot of the review protocols that have been published and the way that they have talked about what they released and withheld, and then plus additional allegations through FOIA litigation and so forth, it's possible that there was just a blanket procedure not to produce documents that related to Donald Trump. I don't want to get ahead of our skis here. And like, I don't want to suggest that there's something explosive that's been hidden, but it does seem like they have repeatedly mentioned that there was withholding based on executive privilege, which just makes no sense, is not part of what could be withheld according to law.

14:05And again, I think this release of documents will get us closer to understanding exactly what DOJ as a policy withheld and what it released.

14:15Michael Popok:I'll put on my commentator hat since I'm not in the courtroom. These documents are crappy for Donald Trump because if they weren't, they would have already been produced. That's just me just spitballing here. I think if they were in some way exonerated him or were great for him, I think you would not be having this tussle, but that's just my view. This came up when, you know, we, we framed this around, you know, your very good sort of analogy with, with Watergate in the sense of, you know, different, in different arena and fora, the pressure points, courts and Congress and Senate and this and that, when it came up.

14:52Michael Popok:Because look, let's be frank. Katie and your case have highlighted these FBI interview notes in a way we knew about them before. We knew about the woman who claimed she was 13 and was sexually abused. But the way that it's being under the searing light, Klieg lights of this litigation, it then made its way into the hearing room for the Senate and for Patel's annual oversight committee hearing. In fact, we have a clip. Let's play it. Let's try something else then. Let's try the remaining pages of the FBI documents that have not yet been provided pursuant to the Epstein disclosure law. As you'll recall, the travel of this was that a woman testified to FBI agents that she had been both sexually and physically assaulted by Donald Trump around the ages of 14 to 15.

15:46There were FBI 302s that resulted from those investigations, from those interviews. In the first call, the only 302s that were released were the ones that did not mention Donald Trump. When the department was caught having held back the other ones, I think because bait stamps revealed their existence, The department then coughed up the 302s that did mention Donald Trump, but we still have 37 undisclosed pages that seem to be the contemporaneous FBI notes that would have formed the basis for the 302 summaries. Summaries. Am I accurate in suggesting that those 37 pages likely include the FBI contemporaneous notes from that interview, from those interviews?

16:47We have complied with the statute and the court orders and produced three and a half million pages of documents for the first time ever. Investigators looked at the information in real time in the prior investigation and made the determinations on referrals for prosecution and not. We've also repeatedly stated if there's new information, we want everyone to come forward so that we can analyze that information as to what is and isn't remaining. So what are those 37 pages? I don't know what you're referencing. We've produced three and a half million pages and we will continue to comply with it.

17:20Michael Popok:Yeah, but not these 37. But if you, you know, does that come into the courtroom in a way? How does that impact your case? The fact that, you know, probably the future, hopefully the future chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is grilling the FBI about your particular item that's in your case. Does that, how does that kind of seep into the water, the water supply? Well, I mean, it's really gratifying that, you know, senators and their staff are paying as close attention to Katie's case as they apparently are. I think it's helpful to see how the FBI is reacting to these sorts of allegations, which is, you know, either dismissiveness or ignorance, real or feigned.

18:00And, you know, either way, it sends a message that the Department of Justice and the FBI just thinks that they're done here and seem really committed to making sure that they make no further productions. And I think that that sort of dismissiveness, even arrogance, is not going to play particularly well in the courtroom. Yeah.

18:24Michael Popok:And when when either through your alerting the judge to submission or him just being a human being that watches television, you know, when he gets around to fashioning his remedy in this case. Yeah, I think things I agree with you. I think things like this matter. I mean, oftentimes we're watching it in the Kennedy Center case. Every time Donald Trump carries something onto Air Force One or says something out on a tarmac, it ends up in real time back in the courtroom. and I think that will likely happen in your particular case. Before we get to the administrative record issue, which I think we're going to nerd out on that for a couple of minutes, which I think is interesting, and explain it in a teachable moment for our audience, let's talk about the foreign language documents because I thought he had a brilliant masterstroke there for the judge because I've always said he's requiring them to translate them.

19:13Michael Popok:He's not requiring them to translate them. he's requiring them to review them and produce them now if you don't want to translate them that's up to you if you want crowdfunding and crowdsourcing they'll be true i guarantee you they'll be translated by the by by stroke of midnight the day that they're released if they're not going to be translated so they don't have to worry about that but he's told them and this let me read from his order because again this is the your brain will fall out of your head your head when you think about this. They're not producing foreign language documents because they're too hard for first level reviewers to review.

19:50Michael Popok:And in an international child sex trafficking ring, which of course they'd have to produce if this was Brady material or other type of material in any kind of criminal case. So their FBI is used to, the Department of Justice is used to having the requirement of producing foreign language documents because it often comes up in conspiracies and in international cases. And here they said they wouldn't do it. So the judge has come back and said, the court concludes, this is on page 15, that defendant's rationale for not initiating the review of the foreign language materials is without merit. The act is unprecedented, an unprecedented disclosure law requiring an attorney general to make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable database all unclassified DOJ files related to the investigation of the notorious sexual predator and child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their associates.

20:45Michael Popok:I think there was some worry there in the White House, subject to certain exceptions and permitted withholdings. And then in terms of it, he's now telling them by a date certain to make a review and reminds them, and Todd Blanche in particular, that the judge, as all federal judges have, they have the power of contempt if his orders are not complied with. And also reminded them that he doesn't want to hear about, we couldn't figure out, like he doesn't want to hear Mr. Block come in again and say, couldn't figure it out, judge. Could you just enter another order? And he's ordered, I've never seen this before.

21:23Michael Popok:He's ordered them that if you think any aspect of my orders are not clear and unambiguous, you got to tell me by the 21st of September and I'll clear it up. Yeah. This is why it's fun, really rewarding to get to talk to you because you're a practicing lawyer. So you kind of pick up on those sort of unique parts too, which is what he said is, look, you have to start the production by September 21st. I have this inherent contempt power if you disobey an order that is clear and unambiguous. So if you think anything is unclear, or ambiguous. Tell me by the 21st. And so I think that sent a very clear message.

22:02I'll say I think Judge Sullivan is very reluctant to order contempt proceedings here, completely understandably so. So I'm hoping that this sort of clarity in his orders motivates DOJ to actually follow the law here so that we don't have to get to that point.

22:24Michael Popok:Certainly motivated to file a notice of appeal. which happened late last night. I'm sure they'll try to go for some sort of stay since the judges denied it here, but we'll have you back after if and when that happens. On the administrative record, because that goes to the heart of the masterstroke of Public Integrity Project, which is they brought this under the Administrative Procedures Act. And they said, you're an agency. You made final agency action. You said you were done producing. Okay. And then Katie got in under the APA. But there's an administrative record that has to be produced. I have a gut, but you're the litigators.

23:04What is the administrative record about the decision-making around what to produce and

23:10Michael Popok:not what to produce, et cetera? What do you think it should consist of? Yeah. And just to set a baseline, the administrative record in any of these sort of challenges to agency action is supposed to be the materials that you relied on in order to make that agency action. So if you're challenging environmental regulation, what's all the scientific evidence that you use to make your determination and so forth? Here, it's what are the rules, what are the procedures that you set up that ultimately led to the production that you made? So they've published one set of review protocols. That's helpful to see.

23:44But I think that there's probably a lot more out there about what FBI agents and AUSAs reviewed and what they thought they could produce, what they thought they couldn't produce, what they thought they could redact, what they thought they couldn't redact. And I'll go back to what we were talking about earlier, this idea that there may have been redactions on the basis of executive privilege. They have suggested this at various times. I have not seen a lot of evidence about what the specific rules are. It is going to be very interesting to learn about that in the record that they produce. And if they don't produce that, I think that's something that may be worth challenging, given that they have alluded to it in the past.

24:25Yeah.

24:26Michael Popok:And there's, I know that Alison Gill is going after the FBI training videos. Have you seen those? I have not, but that would be really helpful if it's in the administrative record. And I would argue that it should be in it. Right. And maybe even at the lower level, What about when they're in the midst of it? You know, there was note taking, you know, there was email exchange about things that were going on with this round the clock review over holidays. You know, where's all that? Where's all the should I produce this? Hey, boss, here's my little hotbox for today. What do you think about these docs?