Harry Litman - Cutting-Edge Legal Argument Could Hinder Trump's Attempt to Rewrite History
Katie Phang, who is my friend and respected colleague, has sued Todd Blanche, who is neither.
The case seeks to force the Trump administration to correct a catalog of failures in its production of documents pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Last week, Phang won a significant victory when U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction in her favor. The victory is anchored in an ambitious legal theory that could go a long way toward providing the public with information and documents that the Trump administration is determined to hide from view.
But the same victory carries a downside risk: a higher court—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court—could wind up using the case to slam shut a door that is, as of now, roughly half open.
The case concerns the Epstein files and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s patent failure to comply with the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). The EFTA, passed with near unanimity last November, requires the Justice Department to make the vast majority of its Epstein-related files publicly available in a searchable database within thirty days. Trump signed it, seemingly grudgingly, and DOJ made rolling productions—most of them late—through January, 3.5 million pages in all. At that point, it basically declared compliance, notwithstanding that some 200,000 pages remained redacted or withheld within the production itself, and that significant additional categories of material—including all foreign-language documents—had never been reviewed or produced at all.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/cutting-edge-legal-argument-could