U.S. President Donald Trump reacts in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 19, 2025. REUTERS Ken Cedeno
It’s perhaps comparable to failing to turn in your homework and then begging the teacher for an extension — only the missed homework could reveal the redacted names of co-conspirators of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Politico reporter Josh Gerstein reports President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, under interim head Todd Blanche, is asking U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan for more time after missing a deadline to file a formal answer to a civil suit that, so far, has not been going in Trump’s favor.
Last month, reporter Katie Phang grabbed a huge win against Blanche and his effort to keep the Epstein files under wraps. After months of stalling by the Trump administration and ignoring the letter of a new law demanding the release of the sex-trafficker’s files, Sullivan demanded insight on DOJ-redacted information on potential Epstein co-conspirators in his trafficking scheme.
Sullivan sided with former MS NOW show host Phang in her lawsuit demanding the Trump administration finally adhere to the word of the Epstein Transparency Act.
In April Trump’s DOJ challenged the department’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But in May, Phang filed a preliminary injunction. Sullivan has since directed the Department to provide additional information. On July 2, responding to the court’s order to show cause, and a submission on July 31, providing unredacted documents solely for the court’s review.
But Blanche argues that the action Phang’s threatens “is untethered from both the facts and the law,” while claiming to bring this motion “to resolve any uncertainty regarding the operative deadline for their response to the complaint and to ensure that this case proceeds on a clear, orderly, and efficient schedule going forward.”
Phang, however, called Trump’s team “dumb” for its total lack of strategy in trying to hide people and names connected to Epstein.
“They're damned if they do and damned if they don't,” Phang said in one interview. “You either produce [the redacted information] and now we have information that I and others can track down and do more reporting on, or you don't … it means they're trying to hide [people].”
“If I were them, I'd comply,” Phang told Left Hook host Wajahat Ali. “I'd say ‘here are the names of the co-conspirators. Here are the names of the bad people that sent these terrible … emails. Here are the names of possible perpetrators. Have a nice day.’ But they are so dumb the way that they play this game.”
Phang added that Judge Sullivan put the Trump administration in terrible danger by demanding the redacted information, judging by the radioactive way the administration handled to it.
“Starting last year right … in the spring of 2025 they convene in the Situation Room about the Epstein files and it's not just the vice president of the United States, JD Vance there. It was also then-attorney general Pam Bondi. It was FBI director Kash Patel. It's the deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino. It was then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche,” said Phang. “… It's the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. It's the White House council … and a slew of other people. If something [fatal] had happened to that situation room pretty much … the entirety of the trump administration upper echelon would have been … exterminated.”