For months, the Justice Department’s position on the Epstein files has rested on a single move: assertion. The blacked-out names belong to victims. The blacked-out names belong to law-enforcement personnel. Trust us.
On Saturday, July 25, a federal judge declined to.
In Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the Justice Department to hand over the unredacted emails and documents at issue, along with the evidence supporting each redaction, by 3:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, July 30. He ordered it produced in camera.
What “in camera” means
A lot of people are going to hear that phrase this week and picture a camera in a courtroom. It means the opposite. In camera is Latin for “in chambers.” The judge examines the material privately. No press. No public. No cameras.
Katie Phang, the journalist and attorney whose lawsuit produced this order, asked to be present for the review. Sullivan said no.
And I want to be precise about why a closed-door review is a check on the government here. Up to this point, nobody outside DOJ has looked at what is underneath those black bars. The only way a judge can determine whether a redaction is legitimate is to see what it covers. If he did that in open court, the supposedly protected information would be public before he had decided whether it legally should be.
So the review is private for the same reason the redactions exist. What changes tomorrow is who gets to decide whether they were lawful.
The lawsuit
Phang didn’t sue under FOIA, which is what most people picture when they imagine fighting the government for records. She sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing DOJ’s failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act was agency action unlawfully withheld, and that the slow-walking was a concrete injury to her ability to do her job.
Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction last month. Rather than immediately ordering specific documents unredacted, he took a middle path: DOJ could take a list of specific actions, or it could show cause for why it shouldn’t have to.
DOJ filed its response on July 2. It argued the redactions were proper. It argued that some underlying handwritten FBI notes were substantially similar to reports already released, and that reviewing and redacting handwritten material increased the risk of exposing victim information. And if the court ordered anything further, it asked for another sixty days to consider an appeal.
Sullivan gave them until three o’clock tomorrow.
What the law actually says
This is the part that matters, and it’s the part almost nobody covering this story quotes.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act became Public Law 119-38 in November 2025. Section 2(b)(1) reads:
No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.
Section 2(c)(1) then lists what the Attorney General may withhold or redact. Personally identifiable information of victims, and victims’ personal and medical files, where disclosure would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Child sexual abuse material. Material that would jeopardize an active federal investigation, and only where the withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary. Properly classified national security information, with a requirement to declassify to the maximum extent possible.
That’s the universe. Congress wrote a short list of permissible reasons and then wrote an explicit prohibition on the reason everyone suspected DOJ would actually use.
The statute also required DOJ to publish a written justification for every redaction. That deadline was December 19, 2025. It came and went.
The documents going into chambers
Sullivan’s order covers a specific set of records, identified by Bates number rather than by category. That specificity is itself a ruling of sorts: he’s proceeding document by document instead of accepting a categorical accounting, which is what a redaction log would have provided if DOJ had produced one.
Among them:
Eight email chains, along with the documentation supporting DOJ’s claim that the names blacked out in them belong to protected victims. One is a 2009 message referencing a “torture video.”
A document in which DOJ says the blacked-out sender and recipients are law-enforcement personnel.
A document connected to a draft indictment containing a heading that reads, plainly, “Co-conspirators.” DOJ says three of the four names hidden under that heading belong to victims. It says another name has since been unredacted because that person did not assert victim status.
That name is Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime executive assistant. Two things about her belong in any honest account. DOJ’s own document misspells her first name as “Leslie.” And Groff has never been charged with anything: her attorney says she was never notified she was considered a co-conspirator, that she voluntarily answered prosecutors’ questions, and that she was told she wasn’t being prosecuted. Prosecutors formally declined to charge her in 2021.
Those DOJ claims may well be true. Victims’ identities should be protected, and the January 2026 release already demonstrated what happens when DOJ gets that wrong in the other direction. Senators Merkley, Murkowski, Luján and Durbin asked GAO to audit the process after that release included email addresses and images in which victims could be identified, while information identifying powerful figures described as alleged co-conspirators appeared to be heavily redacted.
But “may well be true” is exactly the problem. Right now the Justice Department is the only source for the proposition that the Justice Department redacted lawfully. Tomorrow it stops being the only source.
The other clock
At nine tomorrow morning, in Hart 216, the Senate Judiciary Committee holds an executive business meeting with one name on the agenda that matters: Todd Blanche, to be Attorney General of the United States.
Committee Republicans are being asked to move him one step closer to the job permanently, hours before his Department has to justify these redactions to a federal judge.
The vote has already slipped once. It was scheduled for July 23 and pushed a week.
And the two Republicans threatening to hold it up aren’t doing it over Epstein. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are holding out over Trump’s IRS settlement: the proposed $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund, and the addendum Blanche personally signed barring existing audits of Trump, his family and their companies. Cornyn has been demanding a written commitment that the fund is dead, and gave DOJ until four o’clock this afternoon to produce it.
That’s the leverage they chose to use. Worth noticing which set of documents got two Republican senators to hold up an Attorney General, and which set didn’t.
One caution on the arithmetic: a failed committee vote doesn’t end the nomination. A floor vote can proceed without a favorable report. It just takes more procedural steps.
What to watch
Whether the committee advances Blanche at nine.
Whether DOJ complies by three, or runs to the D.C. Circuit for emergency relief instead.
And what Sullivan does after he has looked at the evidence himself.
None of that means names become public at 3:01. Sullivan reviewing records privately is a step toward a ruling, not a disclosure. What it means is narrower and more important: Todd Blanche no longer gets the final word on whether these particular redactions are lawful.
If Sullivan finds that even one of these names was concealed for a reason the statute does not permit, this stops being a fight over paperwork.
It becomes a fight over who the government was protecting, and why.
Before you go
I’ll be tracking both clocks tomorrow: whether the committee advances Blanche at nine, and whether DOJ complies at three or runs to the D.C. Circuit instead. Subscribe, and you’ll get it the same day it happens.
This post took a morning of reading a docket, a statute, and a committee notice, and I’d rather spend tomorrow morning doing the same thing than doing something else for money. Free subscriptions help. Paid subscriptions are the reason I can cover this full time instead of around the edges of another job. If you’re in a position to upgrade, that’s my ask. I’m so grateful you’re here.
Sources
Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (D.D.C.) — full docket, including Sullivan’s July 25 in camera order and DOJ’s July 2 response: courtlistener.com/docket/73246595/phang-v-blanche
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. 119-38 — §2(b)(1) prohibited grounds, §2(c)(1) permitted withholdings: congress.gov
Senate Judiciary Committee executive business meeting, July 30, 2026, 9:00 a.m., Hart 216: judiciary.senate.gov
Merkley, Murkowski, Luján and Durbin letter requesting a GAO audit of DOJ’s redaction practices: merkley.senate.gov
CNN on the redactions in the January 2026 release and the “Co-conspirators” document: cnn.com
Written Wednesday, July 29, before either deadline. Nothing here predicts what DOJ will file.
