Trump DOJ Makes Fatal Move in Epstein Case

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1:30Michael Popok:Having now read the four-page, yep, four-page response that the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche gave to Judge Emmett Sullivan in Katie Fang's case against the DOJ for violation of the Epstein File Transparency Act. Having now read it, I don't think Judge Sullivan is going to be very happy. In fact, I think he's going to be quite upset, and I know what happens when federal judges in black robes get really upset with a party. And it's not going to be a good look for the Department of Justice or Todd Blanche, especially as we're in the midst of the block the Blanche movement to stop him from being attorney general.

2:10Michael Popok:Who did he pick to file the paper? Who did he pick as his lawyer? The number two in the Department of Justice, Stan Woodward. And where did Stan Woodward come from? Stan Woodward came out of the woodwork as a Jan 6th criminal defense lawyer, and the lawyer for the co-defendant for Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case, who was prosecuted by Jack Smith, a guy named Walt Nauta, who was Donald Trump's butler and body man. That's Stan Woodward. So I'm not surprised. I was never overly impressed with the lawyering of Stan Woodward. But now, given the opportunity to get the last word in to avoid sanctions by a federal judge, this ain't going to do it.

2:51Michael Popok:We're going to post it in Legal AF Substack for you as well. I'm Michael Popok. You're here on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Let's get to this breaking news story. How did we get here? Katie Fang, friend of ours and on the Midas Touch Network, filed a lawsuit as a working journalist claiming she had standing for informational harm, standing in for the rest of us, to argue that the Epstein File Transparency Act and the Administrative Procedures Act have been violated by Todd Blanche for his failure to turn over documents properly. You remember Todd Blanche. That's the guy that went begrudgingly to meet with victims and survivors of Epstein in order to try to get a vote from Senator Tom Tillis, and it backfired spectacularly on him.

3:38Michael Popok:So that Todd Blanche has to answer the questions. There were five major categories of documents that needed to be addressed in their filings. One, Where is the email related to the sex torture video that was not properly produced in the production? Where are the handwritten notes concerning the FBI 302 witness statements concerning a woman who was a 13-year-old girl when she claims that Donald Trump sexually abused her? Where are the notes? Where's the redaction log that was required by the statute to be produced? the 200 ,000 pages of missing documents, blacked out documents? Where is the log cataloging why they were blacked out and the basis for doing that?

4:30Michael Popok:Where are the foreign language documents? None of this was produced at any time ever in the case. In fact, I had Katie Fang's lead lawyer, Brendan Ballou Public Integrity Project on with me recently to talk about him seeking a thousand dollar a day fine against Todd Blanche for those violations. Let's play a clip of Brendan and me. Is that in the judge's order? It's incredible. I mean, and let me just back up 10 steps here. You know, all of this is due to Katie Fang, you know, having courage to bring this suit. And I think she was really smart and really focusing on some of these specific categories where, You know, it's just so obvious that the government's breaking the law here.

5:14And I mean, I'll focus on the first one you mentioned, which, you know, maybe doesn't sound super important, but it really is. And I think it goes to the Department of Justice's walllessness right now, which is these foreign language documents. Again, like you said, this is a international investigation spending multiple countries in decades. You know, the Department of Justice just said categorically, we don't review documents that aren't in English, which is pretty shocking.

5:37Michael Popok:Which, by the way, just right there, I am sure that is not true in any other criminal investigation that they're involved with. Could you imagine in another international criminal case that they were investigating, they hid a box of documents that were in foreign language? Well, I can't figure it out. I mean, it's like, think about, you know, if you've worked in criminal law, like if you've got Brady obligations to disclose exculpatory information, that constitutional obligation doesn't go away just because it's in a different language. Like, you risk losing your license with some of these sorts of things.

6:09Anyways, Judge ordered them to produce these foreign language documents. And the Department of Justice's response was just incredible. They said, look, Judge, we told Congress that we weren't going to follow this part of the law, and Congress didn't do anything. You seemed to be okay with it. And it's like, that's not how any law works. You know, just by saying that you're going to break the law doesn't make it legal. If I went to, you know, if I told city council, you know, hey, I'm going to rob this bodega next week, that doesn't make it legal when I do it. And it's the same reasoning here. So I was frankly kind of shocked that they even bothered to make that kind of argument.

6:50I would be very surprised if it holds water with Judge Sullivan.

6:54Michael Popok:Now, Todd Blanche got all wrapped around his axle during his confirmation hearing as well. Let's just play one clip of him trying to answer why he's not meeting with Epstein survivors and about the production. Play the clip. When President Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act, the Department of Justice undertook a Herculean task to review millions and millions of potentially responsive files. We were required under the statute to do this expeditiously and very quickly. The Department of Justice did so. We reviewed over 6 million pages. Many of these pages were not responsive. And what I mean by that is we intentionally over-collected potentially responsive documents.

7:38So, for example, there was a case going on in Florida at the same time as the Jeffrey Epstein case involving another defendant named Epstein, having nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. When we collected materials, we collected everything involving Epstein, including the Epstein that had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. So the review of materials included non-responsive materials. The reviewers were qualified, experienced attorneys within the department and the FBI. They took pains to apply appropriate redactions. There were mistakes that were made, and so approximately 1 % of the redactions had to be fixed after we released the Epstein files.

8:24Chairman, we had dozens of lawyers on call 24-7. Whenever we learned that any victim's name had been improperly not redacted, we immediately took the document down and fixed it as soon as we could. That doesn't excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility, but it does mean that we tried to fix them. We complied with the act. It required us complying with judges' rules in New York, which required us to redact certain victims' names. Even if the victim was also somebody who participated in criminal conduct, the judges in New York did not allow us to unredact those names. The other thing that we did, Chairman, is we made unredacted versions of the entire database available to everybody in this body.

9:16And we did that because of transparency. Remember, for four years, there wasn't a peep about Jeffrey Epstein. The Biden administration did nothing to be transparent about the Epstein case. We have been extraordinarily transparent in not only producing the records, but letting unredacted versions be available to anybody in this body. And if after reviewing unredacted materials, a member had concerns about why something was redacted, they brought them to the department's attention and we addressed that. So I I I want to make sure the American people know that this administration, when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, has been more transparent than any past administration than Biden was or anybody else.

10:01And what we did is we complied with the law.

10:03Michael Popok:That led to a begrudging meeting the second day of the confirmation hearing between Todd Blanche and their survivors. But that went horribly. Here's what one of the survivors had to say about the meeting. Play the clip. What is your sense of whether he had any shame for saying the day before the meeting that he would not meet with all of you? But when Mr. Tillis's vote became contingent on having the meeting, he was there. Did he say, well, I just said that because I didn't want to get tripped up, but I'm actually happy. Like, did he answer for saying he didn't want to meet with you guys 24 hours earlier?

10:44No, that's actually a really good word that you brought up, Nicole, remorse. There was no remorse for any of the damage that was done. There was no remorse when we brought up, we've been trying to talk to you for eight months, nine months to tell you there are important files that should be looked at. There are plenty of investigative leads. There was no remorse in even when Annie said, hey, I know that my sister's report is missing part of the pages. Will you do an investigation? He said, no, there was not going to be any further investigations. and we had to go through proper channels now. We had to go back to the FBI or we could talk to this other specialist.

11:27But basically he wanted us to start all over again. What does it make you feel about victims of child sex trafficking at the hands of powerful men today?

11:41As an advocate, this is one of the things that is extremely frustrating because getting any kind of accountability for any kind of sexual harm is already excruciatingly difficult. And you would think with 6 million files, by the way, he kept correcting us and saying 3 million files. He said there are only 3 million files, not 6 million files. With that volume of evidence, we feel there's, if you can't find an investigative lead in that, then there's a problem with competence or there's decisions being made. And so it's very discouraging because right now this man wants to be the attorney general of the United States and he doesn't know what to do with six million files.

12:27And how can anyone in this country ever feel safe that their case is going to be prosecuted properly, investigated properly when all of this is happening with the world watching, Nicole? I mean, what happens when no one's looking?

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13:27Michael Popok:I've been sleeping on it for a few weeks, and I can honestly say it just feels nicer than my old pillowcase. My hair's been a little smoother in the mornings, and I like how cool it stays through the night. Because you're a listener, Blissey is offering 60 nights risk-free, plus an additional 30 % off when you shop at blissey.com slash legal AF. That's B-L-I-S-S-Y dot com slash legal AF. And use code legal AF to get an additional 30 % off. Your skin and hair will thank you. so judge sullivan back to our filing gave the todd blanche one more shot to respond and here we go it's about i don't know three and a half pages and uh listen i wasn't that impressed with the lawyering and the mind of stan woodward to begin with but i'm certainly not now So this is what they say, and I'll give you the translation.

14:27Michael Popok:Page two. Whereas the defendant's response to the order to show cause, that's the Trump side, set forth rational arguments, the plaintiff's response, that's Katie's side, is filled with hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to oppose punitive sanctions on the department for availing itself of the process the court afforded it. No, the court told you either produce the documents or show cause, good faith basis, you know, supported by facts, usually by an affidavit, sworn testimony, why you couldn't produce it. To this day, Todd Blanche and anybody in his Department of Justice refuses to provide sworn testimony to a judge.

15:07Michael Popok:If I were on the other side of that judge's order, I would have provided affidavits and declarations. But of course, they didn't do it then, and they're not even doing it now. We're just getting naked argument of counsel. This is what they say. The court has not ordered the immediate production of documents. Rather, the court has ordered the department to show cause if it declines to do so. They make it sound like it's just an offer, like an aspirational goal of the judge instead of a order by fiat of a federal judge. On page two, they say, and far from declaring that the department will not abide by a court order.

15:47Michael Popok:The department, meaning the Department of Justice, has accepted the court's offer. Oh, bully you. You've accepted the court's offer. That sounds fantastic. We'll meet you for tea at four o 'clock. Are you kidding me? That wasn't an offer. That was a requirement. It's going to piss off the judge. That's all I'm telling you now. They don't like the thousand dollars a day fine either. And they end it this way on page three. Again, it's not really a five-page. It's really a three-page response signed by Stan Woodward. Ultimately, the department will continue to comply with all applicable disclosure laws, but the department also needs to be afforded the ability to seek appellate review of preliminary injunction orders it believes to be in error.

16:31Michael Popok:Okay, as soon as you get sanctioned, you can go take your appeal. For these reasons, any order of the court should not include contempt or sanctions relief, should include language recognizing the order as appealable and should stay the effective date to allow the government to seek appellate review. Here we go. In fact, when I had Brendan Ballew, Katie Fang's lawyer on, he's like, I don't even know why they haven't appealed yet. They haven't appealed because they know they have a losing argument. That's the answer. They know that if they file the appeal and they get a bad response, which is likely, they lose sort of the political cover and the talking point.

17:09Michael Popok:So they're going to stretch this out. Well, judge, we'd like to appeal, but we're waiting on you, and there's all these procedures, and it's really hard. It's not really hard. You could appeal now. You could have appealed when the judge initially entered his order in favor of Katie Fang, plain and simple. just to remind you what Katie wrote in her in her filing and in seeking what she's seeking she basically says that what they're doing is the opposite of transparency I mean they like to talk about we're the most transparent department of justice about Epstein ever. Of course, they don't abide by anything.

17:57Michael Popok:They don't supply an affidavit. Here on page eight of Cady's filing, they said, in his opposition to plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction, the attorney general never once argued that any of the specific documents that were requested by plaintiff would reveal victim information, for instance. Then, hours after the court granted the motion, by the way, that's the point where they could have taken in the appeal. The government issued a public statement attacking the court. Judge Sullivan's perverse interpretation appears to be focused on driving misleading headlines. This judge is suggesting DOJ violated the law, violate the law by unredacting victim names who, as the department has always explained, sadly became co-conspirators.

18:40Michael Popok:It does a disservice to this court, Katie writes, and to the victims in this matter by making the argument in the press and not in briefing until the attorney general had already lost. And again, you see in the new filing, they don't attack the judge. They wouldn't dare. No, they leave that to their cowardness outside the courtroom in extra judicial statements. We're going to follow this closely. I'm going to grab Katie Fang and ask her to join our show, maybe even tonight on The Intersection, which is on Tuesday nights, 8 p.m. my show on the Midas Touch Network. Tonight, special guest, Mark Elias, talking about your vote and the 13 times he successfully defeated the Trump administration, 13-0, to try to steal voter data to weaponize the mechanisms around voter protection and try to suppress the vote.

19:34Michael Popok:You're not going to want to miss my interview with Mark Elias tonight. Until my next report, take a moment, come over to the Legal AF YouTube channel. Early voting has started. We're trying to get to 2 million subscribers by election day, by midterms. We will with your support. Until my next report, this is Michael.

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