Trump Spirals as DOJ Tries to Protect Him by Refusing to Produce Epstein Foreign Language Docs

0:00Michael Popok:Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice really don't want to produce those foreign language documents that exist, hundreds of thousands of pages of them, in this international child sex trafficking ring we call the Epstein scandal. He's told Judge Sullivan in a new filing that they are moving for a partial stay of his order in his requirement that starting next week, they turn over the untranslated foreign language documents. See, they don't want to translate those documents. And in order to review and produce, they would necessarily have to translate them. And they don't want to do that.

0:40Michael Popok:See, Todd Blanche to this day doesn't know what's inside of those documents. unless they have translated them and he has an inkling of what's inside and therefore doesn't want to produce them because they'll be scandalous and embarrassing. You know who would benefit from the production of the foreign language documents? The Epstein survivors, the FBI, a future FBI and Department of Justice who will be able to bring people to justice based on what is in those files. I mean, we've had Epstein survivors come on our show like Danny Bensky, like Lisa Phillips, and say they know of dozens, dozens of men who have not been prosecuted or brought to justice that were part of that depraved international sex trafficking ring.

1:23Michael Popok:And now Todd Blanche comes to Judge Sullivan with a new filing and says, hey, you know that order where we got to produce those foreign language documents? It's really hard. We have scarce resources. Can you let us off the hook while we go take this up on appeal? Now, interestingly, they don't appeal another aspect or ask for a stay about another aspect of Judge Sullivan's order where they have to turn over about 50 pages of handwritten FBI interview notes related to Donald Trump, related to a victim who says and alleges that she was sexually abused by Donald Trump when she was 13. They're turning those over to the judge.

2:07Michael Popok:But on this issue, they say, well, if we produce it, we can't unproduce it. Why would you want to unproduce foreign language documents that may help get justice for the victims? And then they have the balls in their filing, and I'll read it to you, and we'll put it up on Legal AF Substack later today. They have the balls in their filing to say the harm to the government is greater than the harm to the public of which the Epstein survivors are a part. Why? Because you've got to spend time and money translating? You should have done that from the very beginning because they made a decision that they were not going to translate foreign language documents.

2:46Michael Popok:They now want us to wear those clothes that they made for us. And Judge Sullivan, I think, is not going to have it. He's ordered that by this morning, this morning, and I'll report on it as it comes in, Katie Fang's lawyers respond. And by five o 'clock today, the government file its final paper and then the judge is going to decide. If I were a betting man, I would say Judge Sullivan is not going to stay that portion of his order about the documents that are foreign in foreign languages. Let me read to you from what aspects of this new filing. You're here on Legal AF. I'm Michael Popok. Take a minute.

3:26Michael Popok:And if you like and value what we do, join us here, support us here and hit the free subscribe button. It says on the first page in the memorandum in support of the motion for a partial stay that Todd Blanche, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the United States, is seeking a partial stay. At a minimum, he says that the aspect of the judge's order from last week that requires the defendant to initiate and produce certain documents, they don't want to do that. They are then arguing again that Katie Fang doesn't have the requisite injury or standing to litigate, to bring the case under the Epstein File Transparency Act.

4:10Michael Popok:They are recycling their original argument that she doesn't have standing, doesn't have the requisite injury. Now, Judge Sullivan already ruled that she does, that under the Administrative Procedures Act, she has informational injury as a reporter, as a commentator that can't get her hands on the documents, that she has the requisite injury to bring the case under the Administrative Procedures Act because the government has announced that they have concluded their action. The Department of Justice is an agency. They said they're not producing any more documents. And there we have it. They also argue that no one has standing under the Epstein File Transparency Act.

4:52Michael Popok:It is a statute, an act of Congress that has no private right of action. Nobody can sue under it. Now, part of that has been, I don't believe that's true in any fair reading of the statute. But even if it were, when Congress finally comes back from hiding, I'm talking about the MAGA majority because they went home early to avoid the vote. Tom Massey and Ro Khanna have raised 218 votes in order to pass the Epstein File Transparency Act No. 2, which is going to solve all these problems by giving a private right of action to people, to survivors, and to attorneys general who can file suits to enforce the Epstein File Transparency Act.

5:40Michael Popok:That's not an admission that it didn't have one before, but certainly the Epstein File Transparency Act II is going to help solve this problem. Here's Ro Khanna talking about that now. Thomas Massey and I have defied history for a second time, securing 218 signatures on Epstein 2.0. Four Republicans broke with Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson. Epstein 2.0 will allow state attorney generals to prosecute people like Leon Black and the Epstein class, and it will allow survivors to get access to the Epstein files. We need to ask every single candidate running in the midterms, do you support the Massey-Kana Epstein 2.0 Transparency Act?

6:26Michael Popok:Now, the most ridiculous part of the order talks about production. On page six, The government says that the court is ordering the government to initiate review and production of documents. Of course, having to devote scarce resources to reviewing the documents is quintessential irreparable harm. More to the point, the production of these documents cannot be undone. Only what depraved a-hole, frankly, would be trying to unproduce documents that would help the survivors gain a measure of dignity and obtain justice. And then they go on to say that the public interest tips in their favor and that their harm is greater than the public interest.

7:18Michael Popok:This is on page 23. Any harm to plaintiff is outweighed by harm to the defendant and the public interest favors a stay. Of course, very little case law cited for those propositions. On page 24, they say, for a similar reason, any harm to plaintiff, at worst a brief delay, and any public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by harm to defendant absent a stay. Wait for Katie Fang's lawyers to take that on and completely lay waste to that argument. They cite a case called People for the American Way, recognizing harm from a stay. It had been more than three years since plaintiff's FOIA request, but still finding such harm was outweighed by the finding the government would suffer irreparable harm via disclosure.

8:07Michael Popok:This is different. This is not a Freedom of Information Act request. This is an act of Congress, the Epstein File Transparency Act, which required the production of these documents. And there is no case that they can even cite about the public interest being outweighed by their having to produce documents. Maybe one day it is ruled that they don't have to produce. They should be overproducing anyway.

8:36Michael Popok:let me play you a clip from my interview with Katie Fang's lawyer, Brendan Ballou, in the last couple of days about what's at stake here. Play the clip. 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? 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.

9:16So you use the phrase FD302. This is like the standard form that the FBI uses to record interview notes. They say, we talked 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 sometimes match the, you know, the typewritten FD302. Sometimes 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.

9:54And 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. And I think Judge Sullivan saw past that. But, 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 D.C.

10:34So 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 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. So it's further evidence of getting broader relief to make sure that they actually comply with the law.

11:11Michael Popok:Yeah. So there's a lot of action today that we're going to be following right here on Legal AF. F, the next two pieces of paper come in in the next few hours. One is going to be Katie Fang's opposition to these arguments, claiming that she does have standing, that this is not the same thing as a Freedom of Information Act request, that she has a private right of action under the Epstein File Transparency Act, that she has informational injury, that she has standing under the Administrative Procedures Act that the public injury far outweighs any minimal problem for the Department of Justice to finally get around to translating documents that they should have translated a long, long time ago.

11:56Michael Popok:And then separately, remember, there's been an order by the judge where the Department of Justice is finally going to have to answer the lawsuit. That means we're moving closer to permanent injunction, summary judgment, and trial. about millions and millions and millions of pages of the Epstein files that have not been produced yet because the preliminary injunction didn't touch on it. In addition, the appointment of a monitor is also at stake. A former federal judge, for instance, who would go over the past production and the future production and make sure that it's done right. All comes to a head later today with those two new filings and Judge Sullivan's order.

12:38Michael Popok:If I had a guess, I haven't seen the papers yet. They're just coming in now. The judge is not going to stay his order. If he does, I'll give you the rationale as to why. And then later this week, they're going to have to produce those FBI interview notes about the missing 302s and the pages missing about the person who claims that she was sexually abused by Donald Trump. In fact, here's a clip of Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate Judiciary Committee going after Cash Patel on this very issue. Play the clip. 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.

13:27As 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. There 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.

14:28Am I accurate in suggesting that those 37 pages likely include the FBI contemporaneous notes from that interview, from those interviews? We 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 administration 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?

15:07I don't know what you're referencing. We've produced three and a half million pages and we will continue to comply with it. Yeah, but not these 37. You say there's 37 pages. My time has expired. Thank you, Chairman.

15:17Michael Popok:So we're going to continue to follow it. If you like what we do, join us. hit the subscribe button, come over to Legal AF Substack, where you can read the brief that just got filed by the government and all the other subsequent briefs for yourself. Until my next report, this is Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

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