The Justice Department told a federal judge it shouldn’t have to produce the FBI’s handwritten interview notes from the Epstein investigation because the notes are “substantially similar to” the typed reports already released.
In the same case, according to an order Judge Emmet Sullivan filed today, the department has acknowledged publishing draft indictments that were themselves substantially similar.
That’s the second of three things in a three-page order, and it’s the one I want to spend the most time on. Start with the first.
What Sullivan asked for, and what came back
The case is Phang v. Blanche, in federal district court in Washington. Katie Phang sued over how the Justice Department has been redacting the Epstein files. Todd Blanche is the defendant in his official capacity as acting Attorney General, which is how you sue an agency.
I wrote about this docket last week, when the department carried ten documents into Sullivan’s chambers for a private review. That review has happened. Nothing came out of it publicly, and he has not ruled on a single redaction.
On July 25, Sullivan ordered the department to document its representation that particular names blacked out of the files were victims’ names. Today’s order describes what came back: an assertion that the redacted text contains the identities of “victims or potential victims whose counsel have contacted the government and requested that the persons be treated as victims.” Nothing was attached to support it.
Sullivan’s finding is one sentence:
The Defendant’s assertions do not comply with the Court’s Order, which requires documentation to support the assertions.
Here is the provision the department is redacting under. This is the entire authority, from the Epstein Files Transparency Act:
personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal and medical files
Victims is the word Congress used. Potential victims does not appear in that provision anywhere. The department’s filing, as Sullivan describes it, is reaching for a category the statute did not create, and when a judge asked it to show its work, it restated the claim.
The notes
When the FBI interviews someone, an agent writes the interview up afterward on a form called an FD-302.
Back on June 25, Sullivan ordered the department to produce the underlying notes those write-ups came from, redacted where necessary, or to show cause why it shouldn’t have to. It didn’t produce them. Today’s order gives the two reasons it offered: the notes are substantially similar to the typed reports and therefore duplicative, and handwriting carries a risk of missing a victim’s name.
I have spent fifteen years asking for the handwritten version.
A police officer’s memo book is what he wrote in at the time. The typed entry on the online booking form is what he produced later. Plenty of times I have found something in the memo book that never made it into the typed version. In New York we were entitled to both, and there is a reason for that.
I once had a judge stop a trial in the middle of it and send an officer back for his memo book, because I got him on cross to admit he’d had one on the day of the arrest and had never turned it over. That judge was furious.
A memo book in state court and an FBI 302 in a federal case are different documents under different rules, and I’m not claiming otherwise. What carries across is the reason anybody who has done this work wants the handwritten copy. The typed version is a document about an interview. It was written afterward, by one person, deciding what mattered. The notes are what that person had in front of him while he decided.
Sullivan’s answer to the duplication argument is short. The Epstein Act contains no exception for documents that are substantially similar to other documents, and the department has already acknowledged publishing draft indictments it described the same way. On the handwriting, he wants to know why the notes can’t be redacted manually, or why it can’t be done some other way.
The handwriting problem is real. No search function runs through an agent’s cursive, and a name missed on page forty of a notebook is a name that gets published. I understand why a lawyer lands there. What the department was asked for in June was an explanation, and duplication was the first thing it reached for.
The redaction log
A week ago I told you the redaction log Congress required didn’t exist. The provision is one sentence:
All redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress.
Today’s order says the department states it will comply, and that the parties disagree about whether there was ever a deadline for doing it. There is no date in the text of that provision, which is how you end up arguing in August about a law that was signed in November.
What I’m watching
August 13, one o’clock, Courtroom 24A.
Whether the department arrives with documentation this time or with another assertion. Whether the notes get produced. And whether anything shows up in the Federal Register, which is a thing you can check yourself.
Blanche is the acting Attorney General because the Senate hasn’t confirmed him, and that vote is expected this week. The Senate is deciding whether to make it permanent in the same week a federal judge put on the docket that this department’s filings do not comply with his order. Those are two dated facts and I’m putting them next to each other. I’m not telling you they’re connected.
What this is and isn’t
Every description of what the department argued in this post comes from Sullivan characterizing its filings in today’s order. I have the order. I do not have the department’s June response or its notice of compliance. Where I’ve written that the department said something, what I mean is that the judge says it said something, and that distinction is worth keeping.
Nothing was unsealed today. Sullivan has not ruled on the redactions, has not ordered anything released, and has not sanctioned anyone. An order setting a status hearing is not a sanction.
None of this exists without the incredible Katie Phang bringing this suit. No order, no in camera review, no hearing on the thirteenth. Everything above is downstream of one lawyer deciding to litigate over how these files got redacted, and that is not a small thing to take on. Beyond grateful for Katie and her tirelessness in this fight.
I read this order as soon as it hit the docket, and I’ll be reading whatever comes in before the thirteenth.
I have never put an informative post behind a paywall, and I’m not going to start. Everything I write here is free to read.
So paid subscriptions are what pay for it. I spent most of today on a three-page order and the statute behind it, and I’ll spend most of August 13 on the hearing. No one assigns me this, and no one pays me for it, except the people subscribed here.
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Sources
Order, ECF 29, Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417 (D.D.C. Aug. 6, 2026). Docket here.
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. 119-38 (Nov. 19, 2025), 139 Stat. 656. Full text here.
