Breaking now, Judge Emmet Sullivan has granted a preliminary injunction that orders the Department of Justice to either release a number of specific Epstein files to the public, or to “show cause” why they shouldn’t.
The government has until July 2 to file responses.
Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang filed suit to enforce the Epstein Transparency Act. The judge has evidently determined that she has suffered harm from being unable to report on the unreleased files, and therefore has standing to sue.
This decision seems like it might be headed for an appeal, but Judge Sullivan declined to stay, or delay implementation, to allow the government time to appeal. So the clock to July 2 is currently ticking.
Bates numbers that are mentioned:
Ordered to unredact names:
- EFTA00749245
- EFTA01187999
- EFTA01930501
- ETFA01928255
- EFTA00628112
- EFTA02648868
- EFTA02504630
- EFTA01022356
- EFTA01703108
- EFTA00038227
Ordered to produce underlying FBI notes:
- EFTA01245620
- EFTA02858481
- EFTA02858491
- EFTA02858495
Opinion: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779.16.0_2.pdf
Full court docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73246595/phang-v-blanche/
“Judge orders” doesn’t really mean much anymore since Trump started ignoring rulings he didn’t like and the rest of the Republican party decided to let him.
Rulings without consequences are meaningless.