06/14/2026
The Justice Department had a legal deadline to release the Epstein files, and it missed it. But one journalist is set on not letting them get away with it and is suing to force compliance, including demanding documents that name the president.
Katie Phang, a legal analyst and independent journalist, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington DC, accusing Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, passed by Congress in November 2025 with just one Republican voting against it, mandated the full release of all Epstein-related government records by December 19, 2025. Trump had lobbied against the legislation before grudgingly signing it into law. That deadline passed with only partial disclosure of an estimated six million documents, with a portion of the information, including names of possible perpetrators, being redacted.
Phang’s 15-page lawsuit accuses Blanche of missing statutory deadlines, making improper and excessive redactions, retracting documents already released, and actively concealing records. She is asking a federal judge to appoint an independent special master to oversee compliance, compel full disclosure, and strip out unlawful redactions.
“The special master would act as somebody who doesn't work at the DOJ,” Phang said on her YouTube show on April 27, adding, “because, yeah, let's let the people police themselves that really have not complied with the law.”
Her filing specifically asks the court to order the unredacting of names of Epstein's associates in eight emails, names of potential co-conspirators in two internal DOJ documents, and a set of withheld records from an FBI investigation into allegations involving Trump directly. She also demanded that Blanche explain the remaining redactions.
Separately, DOJ’s own inspector general launched a separate audit into whether the department complied with the transparency law. The two sponsors of that legislation, Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, have both said they believe the DOJ is not complying, according to USA Today. In January, Massie and Khanna asked a federal judge to appoint a special master in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case to oversee the release of Epstein documents. The DOJ objected, and the judge ruled that his jurisdiction in the Maxwell case did not cover the Epstein files. Whether Phang's lawsuit succeeds where others have failed remains to be seen.