Trump Trapped in Court as Judge Probes Epstein Cover-Up

0:00Michael Popok:Did Donald Trump order his Department of Justice not to produce handwritten notes of a person who says that when she was 13, she was sexually abused by Donald Trump? Yes or no? We got a new filing in the Katie Phang versus Todd Blanche in the Department of Justice. Sometimes it seems like Katie Phang against the world, except she clearly has Judge Emmett Sullivan on her side. I just interviewed Katie's lawyer, Brendan Ballew, about the hearing that happened a week ago. And now we've got the new notice to the court. Don't be fooled by the innocuous title, the plain vanilla title. Notice to the court.

0:33Michael Popok:What is it a notice of? It's a notice that Andrew Block, the lawyer for the Department of Justice, on behalf of Todd Blanch, did not tell the truth to the judge about the handwritten FBI notes, four separate interviews of a woman who claims that when she was a 13-year-old girl, she was sexually abused by Donald Trump. See, they want to get away with just producing the typed written notes of the FBI agent, not the handwritten notes. Anybody that's ever taken handwritten notes knows that there's a tremendous departure, departure, a tremendous delta between what you write in your handwriting note, handwritten notes, and what in using your discretion, especially when the president, his name is involved, you then type up in the official notes.

1:19Michael Popok:And when you lay things side by side, I've done this throughout my entire career. When you look at the handwritten drafts versus the formal document, much of the color and content leaks out into the official document. That's why Katie Fang's trying so hard to get us the actual handwritten notes of the interviewers of this interviewee. And when Andrew Block, the lawyer for the Department of Justice, was asked point blank in the hearing, and we have the transcript, folks, we have the receipts, Are there any other examples of the FBI producing the handwritten notes of the FBI's formally typed up 302 interview notes in the Epstein File Transparency Act production?

2:05Michael Popok:And he said of the FBI 302s, I don't think so, Your Honor. Wrong. The notice to the court says Mr. Block was wrong. Do you think it's a coincidence that he was wrong about the files related to Donald Trump? I don't. There are no coincidences. I'm Michael Popak. You're on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Let's get to the notice to the court and what the court has ordered next. Judge Sullivan has ordered that the Department of Justice, by middle of next week, respond to the notice to the court. Tell me whether I've been lied to or not, I guess is the right way to put it. Here's what the notice to the court says.

2:43Michael Popok:We'll put up certain pages of it on the screen. In the June 25, 2026 preliminary injunction order from the judge. The court ordered the defendant to either produce to the public handwritten FBI interview notes for four different interviews that we know happened because we have the typed up versions with the victim information redacted or show cause why the notes should not be produced. In response, defendants claimed that he did not produce the notes for two reasons, because they are duplicative of the typewritten 302 reports. And you know that's not true. You know the typewritten reports are not a verbatim transcript of every little doodle and comment written down in an interview of a victim.

3:27Michael Popok:They interviewed her four separate times. Shows you how credible they thought the witness was. So that's not true. And the second was, well, there's a risk of inadvertent disclosure of victim information. So redact it. You go through the notes, and if it looks like victim information, You put a black mark on it. You put it on the redaction log. But they went through their own hearing transcript and then they went through the Epstein File Transparency Act production. And here's what they're telling the court in this notice of filing by Public Integrity Project, Brendan Ballew and others. At the hearing, the court asked the defendant's counsel whether defendant has produced other handwritten FBI interview notes that form the basis for 302 reports like not involving Donald Trump.

4:08Michael Popok:And defendant's counsel responded, to my knowledge, not with respect to the 302s. Defendant's counsel is not correct. That's a nice diplomatic way, and I appreciate it, of saying defense counsel just lied or is willfully blind, knew or should have known that that was a misstatement. Should have said, at the worst, should have said, I don't know enough, judge. I'd have to do some investigation. But no, stood there and said, not with respect to 302s. That's what happened, judge, and that's a lie. That's a lie. And how do I know it's a lie? Because Katie Fang's lawyer has told the judge it's a lie and then produced the evidence and the receipts to show that it was.

4:48Michael Popok:defendant has in fact produced handwritten fbi interview notes they say in their filing underlying 302 reports and then they give examples of it i'm going to put some up on the screen attached are the handwritten notes underlying the 302 interview report produced that and then they give the serial number for the document production uh plaintiff has identified nearly 100 additional examples of handwritten interview notes produced by the defendant. So what do they want the court to do? Now that they've painted Mr. Block and the Department of Justice as liars, they want the court, while the court is currently reviewing documents, because documents from the last hearing were submitted about these FBI interview notes to the judge who's reviewing them, we call it in camera, privately, by himself.

5:36While he's doing that review, the court should consider

5:40Michael Popok:where the defendant's stated justification for withholding the interview notes is consistent with the defendant's production of other handwritten materials, not with Donald Trump's name on it, when conducting its in-camera review of the notes. Then we go to Exhibit B, which we'll put up on the screen. These are handwritten notes from one of the interviews. Everything from where did you live and where did you go to school to whether you saw the Lion King, who was with you, like Leslie Goff, the administrative assistant, how much money did Epstein give you? I mean, just voice lessons and grooming and photos.

6:18Michael Popok:This is not about the victim that Donald Trump is alleged to have abused. This is another victim. Pages and pages of things, including things that have been redacted, which means they know how to redact handwritten notes when they want to. Very clear notes about sexual encounters and money being paid, how Leslie Goff, the administrative assistant for Epstein, set up the meetings. And then they posted in Exhibit C the very same interview notes, right, of the victim here who alleged that Donald Trump sexually abused her. Or actually, sorry, this is about, that matches that last interview notes. And you can see that there are things that are just left out.

7:16Michael Popok:They then attach, as Exhibit D, long lists from the Epstein Transparency Files Act library of where handwritten interview notes that just didn't involve Donald Trump were produced. They also submitted, at the request of the judge, a proposed order. See, I know things were going well for Katie Fang's side when the judge turned to her lawyers and said, you draft the proposed order. As opposed to saying, why don't you guys work together and send me a submission? No, no, you draft it. I trust you. I mean, not only are they called Public Integrity Project, but I trust you in general to do this work.

7:55Michael Popok:I don't trust the Department of Justice. That's what the signal is from Judge Sullivan. And they submitted it about the redaction log. Now, I interviewed Brendan Ballew about the hearing, and he said it was an extraordinary hearing, one that he's never seen before. So you can get a little bit of a flavor of how you think this is going to be received, this new notice of filing by Judge Sullivan. Play the clip of Brendan Ballew with me being interviewed. Talk about what went down at that hearing. It was a pretty crazy two hours, you know. So just to set the baseline here, the department, you know, we want a preliminary injunction requiring DOJ to produce a whole bunch of information or show cause why they couldn't.

8:31DOJ has just repeatedly failed to comply with the court's order here and has failed to reply, to comply with follow-on orders. And so this was really a chance for the judge to bring the parties in and understand, okay, why Department of Justice are you not following these orders? And what am I, Judge Sullivan, going to do about it? And to your point, you know, I want to be diplomatic here. I want to be respectful, but it was a shocking sort of experience for me, having been at the Department of Justice to see the arguments that they were making or the arguments that they weren't making, in that they really didn't seem to have a plan for the hearing or for what the judge's arguments were going to be, or questions were going to be.

9:12Sort of basic questions about the case, what their responses were. There were just long periods of silence in the courtroom as the Department of Justice, I think struggled to articulate why it couldn't follow the law here. So I had never really been in a hearing like that, where one side was just silent on their own arguments, just saying that they were going to do things and wouldn't explain why. And I think that made the follow-on conversation, which was Judge Sullivan's essentially half hour long description of having previously found the Department of Justice in contempt more than a decade ago, I think really chilling because I think he really made clear the profound around professional consequences that follow you if you are in fact held in contempt.

9:56I am certain that Judge Sullivan does not want that to happen, but I am hopeful that his message resonated with the government lawyers. So the judge has ordered that by the middle of next week,

10:09Michael Popok:the Trump side, the Blanche side, the Department of Justice side respond to the proposed order about where is the missing redaction log and why isn't it here with an affidavit or otherwise, And also comment about this notice to the court about the curious case of Mr. Andrew Block, who seems to have an allergy to the truth in how he presents his case to Judge Sullivan. Was Judge Sullivan lied to? Did Donald Trump, for instance, order that his Department of Justice comply with an order to not produce the handwritten notes because they are terrible for Donald Trump? What are they hiding? And we'll continue to follow what their response is to that early next week.

10:50Michael Popok:If you're looking at justice as a wheel or a life cycle of a case as a wheel, we have just moved and cranked considerably closer to Judge Emmett Sullivan, who's already threatened or promised contempt charges against the Department of Justice. We're moving even closer to contempt charges against Todd Blanche, who's the named defendant and the Department of Justice and sanctions as a result. What do I think is going to happen? I think we've just, the worm has just turned against, especially now with the lying in court, against the Department of Justice as Judge Sullivan decides the ultimate remedy in this case that's being sought as a permanent injunction by Katie Fang and her lawyers, which is not only the production of millions of more documents, but that the Department of Justice has forfeited their right to be responsible for the production.

11:40Michael Popok:bring in the independent monitor, bring in the independent special master officer of the court, a former federal judge to supervise this project and not only the future production of millions of pages, but go back and look at what was produced, how it was produced, the methodology around it being produced and find out from an audit or otherwise if even more documents should have been produced other than the three million. We are that close, folks. I'm Michael Popak. We're close. We're on Midas Touch. And on Legal AF, take a moment, hit the free subscribe button as we continue to grow our pro-democracy channel.

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