Transcript of Katie Phang on New Order in Epstein Files Lawsuit

Donald Trump and his Department of Justice were just hit with a federal court order that they feared the most in connection with Midas Touch host Katie Fang's lawsuit against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch pursuant to the Epstein Transparency Act. As Donald Trump and his DOJ tried to cover up Trump's dark past and continue to cover up the Epstein files and the child sex trafficking ring contained within those Epstein files, and the co-conspirators continue, uh, to try to have their concealed. Katie Fang went on the offense. She sued Todd Blanch in federal court in Washington, DC. Recently, the federal judge ordered that Todd Blanch turn over certain documents that had not been produced to the federal judge, Judge Sullivan, for something called in-camera review, where the federal judge will review the documents to see if the Department of Justice is complying or lying. Todd Blanch claimed he followed that order and turned over the documents for in-camera review. And this federal judge said, nope, you are a liar. You did not comply with my order. And I am hereby ordering you to appear for a hearing that will be taking place at 1:00 PM on August 13th.

Todd Blanch, DOJ, you now need to show up and explain why you just violated this court order. Why are you lying to this court? I asked you specific things. The federal judge said, I want understandings why you redacted these co-conspirator names. You're claiming they're victims. Supposed to provide the backup documentation to prove that these were actually victims and not co-conspirators. Instead, you just responded, trust me, bro. No, we don't trust you. You did not provide the documents. In addition, we want to see— the federal judge says, I want to see the privilege logs or the redaction logs. So on August 13th, I'm not asking you whether or not you will produce the redaction logs. You will produce the redaction logs. I want to know the timeline when you intend to produce the redaction logs. So show up and be prepared to, uh, discuss that. Also, why have you not turned over the FBI notes to the FD302s, those 302 reports, those FBI 302s that involve allegations against Donald Trump? You're claiming that I don't get to see it, or you're not turning it over because they're quote substantially similar to the final FBI 302 reports.

There's no similarly, uh, substantially similar exception. Those documents, those notes need to be turned over. We want you to explain that on August 13th when you show up to a federal court appearance. It is so ordered. Show up in court. Let's bring in Katie Fang right now. And by the way, make sure you all subscribe right now to Katie Fang's YouTube channel. That channel needs to get 1 million subscribers. And subscribe to her audio podcast Sidebar with Katie Fang. Katie Fang A hero. Let's bring in Katie Fang right now and ask her this. The exclusive first interview with Katie Fang on the big news that Judge Sullivan just handed down this order moments ago. Now I want to bring in Katie Fang to break down the latest order, uh, in her case against Todd Blanch under the Epstein Transparency Act. Katie, great to see you. Judge Sullivan's order basically saying Todd Blanch is not complying with Judge Sullivan's previous order about turning over certain categories of documents. Also addressing the issue of the redaction log, which I thought was very significant also. And, you know, it seemed that Judge Sullivan may have been waiting to see were they going to respond to his order and comply, to see how to handle the redaction log.

And when they seemed to be deceiving the judge there, he then said, oh, I didn't forget about that redaction log, by the way. Talk to us about this order, what happened, and then I want to talk about some some other stuff as well. Let's talk about it.

You never want to underestimate a federal judge, but for a second there I was like, did, did he forget that I— that he had ordered Todd to turn over the stuff? So yes, so the breaking news is, and I'm gonna start with the, uh, it's the primacy recency, right, right, Ben? I'm gonna start with the most recent thing that just happened, which is an order that just got entered within the last hour by federal judge Emmett Sullivan in my lawsuit against Todd Blanch. The reason why this is so momentous is Judge Sullivan has now set a status hearing for next week, August 13th, at 1 PM Eastern in court ordering both parties, as in me and Todd Blanch, to have to appear. And he has pretty much said in this order, Todd Blanch, you have now defied my orders. And I think this is a really important moment when it comes to compliance and whether or not this judge is going to allow Todd Blanch to continue to violate not only the Epstein Files Transparency Act but the judge's own orders. The judge, notably, when he did an order back on July 25th— Ben, just to refresh people's recollection— told Todd Blanch to come to chambers so that the judge could do an in-chambers inspection of the unredacted documents and a specific small subset of them.

And he told Todd Blanch pretty much, I don't believe you when you make representations in your court filings about why you have redacted certain things, so you have to bring with you proof. Kind of, I call it, show your work. If you are legitimately redacting pursuant to the law, then you'll be able to support those allegedly legitimate redactions. Okay, so that being said, the next thing that happens is we get this order and the judge is like, you told me that you were going to bring it, or I told you, excuse me, you had to bring it. And according to Judge Sullivan, he says, nah, defendant did not provide such documentation. So now you have to come to court And you have to— you shall, not permissively, you could— it's you shall be prepared to discuss what documentation you can— you will provide to support your assertions that these truly are victims that you have redacted. In addition, and really interestingly, there's some handwritten FBI interview notes that pertain to the victim who alleges that when she was 13 years old, she was sexually abused and physically battered by Donald Trump. Now, the 302s, as they're called, these FBI reports, they've been released publicly with heavy redactions, but the underlying FBI interview notes, I know that they exist.

They were actually turned over in discovery in Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York. According to Todd Blanch, he has them, but he told the court, I'm not turning them over because they're substantially similar to what the 302s, the ultimate official kind of report, ended up reading. And so what did Judge Sullivan say? He says, hmm, Blanche, you never pointed to the provision in the Epstein Files Transparency Act that contains an exception that allows you to withhold it, um, and you haven't pointed to the exception that says if something's duplicative, that you don't have to turn it over. And in fact, Ben, what was fantastic about what Judge Sullivan does here is he also says, and hey Blanche, you actually admitted in your own filing that you've published, quote, substantially similar draft indictments, and that's the reason why you're not turning over some other indictments. And so, you know what, you got to come to court on the 13th of August and explain why the handwritten notes cannot be redacted manually or why the redactions cannot be accomplished in another way, which means we're going to get these handwritten interview notes by the FBI over 4 interviews done with this victim who alleges that she was abused by Donald Trump.

And then finally, here's the redaction log you mentioned. This redaction law was required to be done by the law, and it's to log each and every individual redaction that's been done. And Blanche said, 'I did a summary, it's okay, I don't need to do it.' And Judge Sullivan says, 'Nope, come to court and you shall be prepared to discuss the timing for complying with this requirement.' Not a 'come to court and tell me why I can't do it,' it's 'come to court and tell me when you're going to do it.' And I think then this is a really important inflection point in my litigation. Because this is the time when Judge Sullivan says, take a, you know what, or get off the pot.

You know, it's all a really big deal. But that redaction log piece of it provides the roadmap to everything they're hiding. And the same way Blanche is claiming, well, we didn't turn over the notes about these allegations against Trump because we've invented a substantially similar carve-out that doesn't exist in the Epstein Transparency Act. Yeah. When we're to now see this redaction log of the millions of millions of documents they are withholding. We'll look through them and say, that's not executive privilege. That's not a real exception. What's that? Foreign language? You just made up another exception. So we can now go line by line. And by the way, Katie, this is what we do as litigators. The whole thing. You and I as litigators have had cases with terabytes of documents. And you have a team of associates. I was part of those teams when I was a litigator. And you do— you draft these things, you draft these logs. It's not fun to do. It's one of the most tedious tasks. That's what lawyers do. It's like when you build the building, you got people who are the welders and do the concrete. This is what you do.

And you know what is so beautiful about Midas Touch is the following: you have brought so many of us together, including my friend and colleague Allison Gill. And the reason why I bring up Allison right now is this is really important. She and I were doing an episode on her, her show called The Breakdown on Midas Touch. And she and I were talking about how she had the DOJ admit that they have training videos for FBI analysts that were provided last spring in 2025 before the Epstein Files Transparency Act was even a glimmer in the eyes of Ro Khanna and Tom Massie. And those training videos told these analysts that they had to flag not only Trump's name, but other VIPs. And that they had to redact it and log it. So we know, Ben, that the FBI at a minimum knows how the hell to do this because the DOJ and the Trump administration told them how to do it. So everybody knows how to do a redaction log. This is not some big secret thing that's particularly complex. You could whip out a table on Microsoft Word and do it if you really did not want to do it, you know, in a more sophisticated way.

But what's really important is in a filing that was just done in my lawsuit Todd Blanch said, hey, judge, there's a thing called the Privacy Act, and the Privacy Act says that I can protect email addresses that aren't even victims, that are people that are actual perpetrators, etc., right? And so that's another exception that Todd Blanch and the Trump DOJ just pulled out of thin air. But it's really important because that protocol, like the orders that were given to be able to justify how these redactions were done. It's dated January of 2026, Ben. And the timing is important because remember, the deadline under the Epstein Files Transparency Act for these redactions to be done and for it to be released was December of 2025. And so what they've done is they've created this memorandum internally at the DOJ that they've published trying to justify why they've redacted so much. But if we get this redaction log and assuming Arguendo is actually accurate and credible, then to your point, we can see each and every individual redaction, and then I can challenge them. But without this redaction log, I'm supposed to just take his word for it?

I've called it the trust me, bro exception that Blanche has decided to adopt for the entirety of these files, which is why I'm grateful that Judge Sullivan has said there ain't no thing called a trust me, bro exception in the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Well, look, and we saw, for example, the fake deposition of Pam Bondi, which was supposed to be under oath and with the video camera, and it wasn't. And we saw the DOJ objections there where the DOJ created fake exceptions. Pre-2025 exception. Okay, what was it? Pre-2020. What are you even talking about? We've got another exception. Can't be anything that happened in the White House or the Oval Office. Okay, that's an exception. So they create these exceptions. But one of the kind of real sick and disturbing things amongst the many, which I think you've identified, is what it seems that Trump and Blanche were doing. Is that they were going to co-conspirators and saying, here's how we protect you. Call me up and say you're a victim. And if your lawyer gives me a ring and says that you're a victim, we then don't challenge that. We'll declare you a victim and then we'll redact you under the victim exception. So they've leaked the victims publicly and the co-conspirators had their powerful law firms call up and say, we're the victims. That to me is what Sullivan knows. That to me is what you know. That's what's, what's really going on here with that category.

And it's why you and your brilliant lawyers surgically focused on that is because I think that's what you wanted to prove, that you've declared the perpetrators the victims in order to conceal their names. And if that's what you were willing to do there, that's the tip of the iceberg. And that's what I think's going on. Tell me. I think that's part of the strategy behind What you and your lawyers were doing.

Part of it. But, but, but here, let's, let's, let's pull on that thread a little bit more. Let's peel this back even more, right? Because think about that. If you allow, as the DOJ, to expand the definition of a victim vis-à-vis Epstein, Maxwell, and others, and you allow people to self-identify, then ultimately, Ben, what's going to happen? You're going to have everybody self-identifying as a victim. You're going to have Ghislaine Maxwell say, well, I was duped by Jeffrey Epstein, or I was taken advantage of by Jeffrey Epstein. And that results in what? Blanche, the DOJ, which controls the FBI, never investigating anyone. Because then Blanche says, everybody's a victim, and so we're not going to investigate a victim because God forbid we ever investigate a victim. And what's wild is it occurred to me while I was chewing on, on this idea of him allowing everybody to self-identify as a victim, why is it then if, let's say, Jane Smith comes forward and says, I am a victim and that's the reason why my name has to be redacted, why is it the FBI is now not investigating what happened to Jane Smith? Let's just say credibly this person comes forward and says, I am a victim, and it wasn't just Jeffrey Epstein.

Let's say it was, you know, one of Donald Trump's friends. Why is the FBI not running down these leads? Ah, because according to Todd Blanch, there's no evidence that Epstein trafficked anyone to anyone else, to any third party. And Todd Blanch also says, I don't have anything to do because the victims haven't given me any type of thing to chase down, and so I'm going to be willfully ignorant and willfully blind and not do my job because somebody is telling him not to do his job. Right. Which he's willingly saying, I'm not going to do it. But it all smacks of a cover-up, a concealment. And that is the real criminality that's going on here, that there are real victims that aren't getting the justice that they deserve because you have somebody who's in the pocket of the convicted felon, Donald Trump.

Finally, talk to us about the default. You called out Blanche for not meeting the deadline to respond. Do they not know that when there's a preliminary injunction, there's also an underlying operative complaint that requires responsive pleadings to both? And I mean, one of the things that you and I both kind of call out them as well is not just the evil and maliciousness, but all of those characteristics that I had seen when I was a litigator and when I would be watching you show up in court, you'd watch really bad law firms and you'd sit there sometimes and be like, how these people pass the bar? What are they doing? It was like the judge was, you know, And you see, oh my gosh, the DOJ has just become like a bad law firm with a bad reputation. They don't even do the most basic stuff. It's like it's a deadline. You respond to the preliminary and the operative complaint. There's deadlines. It's called court. Talk to us about court.

It's so— what's outrageous is when you sue somebody, you have to respond. You either answer the allegations by either admitting or denying them, or you file something maybe like a motion to dismiss, right? Whatever is supported by the law and the rules of procedure. I sued Todd Blanch at the end of April of 2026. His answer was due within 60 days, which would have been June 29th of 2026. We sit here on August 6th and I have nothing. And so my lawyers reached out and said, hey, hey, you might want to respond. We're going to be gracious and give you some time of just a few days, but you got to respond. And they're like, no, you're so wrong. The preliminary injunction issue remains open. The judge has hasn't ruled on your motion for preliminary injunction, which, Ben, then what the hell has Todd Blanch been turning over to the judge so far? That's all pursuant to a preliminary injunction order. And then they also said, and hey, by the way, we want an additional 60 days after everything is said and done to explore whether or not we want to appeal, and we think this is such a great idea.

And we were like, no, peace out, that's not going to happen. So what do they file? And it's got Jeanine Pirro's name on it, Ben, which I think is also delicious. So they file a motion to stay all of the deadlines, nunc pro tunc, pending resolution of the motion for preliminary injunction and motion to set briefing schedule. So I walk through this on my channel, Katie Fang News, to explain that in this motion, Blanche admits he blew the deadline. And he goes in this motion and he says, Ben, hey, I have something called excusable neglect. I missed the deadline and it was oversight that was regrettable but not intentional. And so, you know what, what I need is I need you to wind the hands of time back to when it was originally due in June. I need you to give me more time, even though that deadline has now way past, and then I need you to also give me another 60 days. But what's the point of the delay? We all know it's because they don't want to have to turn this stuff over. But strategically, Ben, you and I also know this too as litigators, this is a surefire way of pissing off the judge even more.

You're telling this judge that the order he entered on my motion for preliminary injunction that says explicitly plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction granted, you're telling this judge that he never ruled on it and still open. But then you also, in the same filing, admit that you missed the deadline. It's the games, it's the gaslighting. It's become a brand for this DOJ, and this is the wrong judge to try, you know.

And this is how they handle everything. I mean, the catastrophic war in Iran, fake nego— it's games. When the other side doesn't play your games though, and you're dealing with these other issues also, or when you don't have a Trump-appointed judge like the BBC case, where it just so happens that's the judge Trump appointed in 2019. He goes, oh, good. When you actually have the systems working, Trump can't handle it. It's why he wants to break the systems. But it's why you're fighting every day on the Katie Fang News channel. Everybody subscribe to Katie Fang News on YouTube. That's a channel that should be at a million subscribers yesterday. Let's get that channel 1 million subscribers today or tomorrow then. So after this video is over, everybody please go subscribe to Katie Fang's YouTube channel, put in the comments that you saw this video, and also subscribe to Sidebar with Katie Fang. That's the audio podcast. So wherever you get audio podcasts, subscribe to Sidebar with Katie Fang there and the YouTube channel. Katie, thanks for your heroic work. It is an honor to be your colleague here at the Midas Touch Network.

Ben, thanks always to you and everyone, Brett, Jordy, everybody here at Midas Touch. This really is the community that is the Midas Nation that is really pushing this forward. Um, and I am always, uh, privileged to be able to say all of you are on this fight with me. I'm not alone. I may be the named plaintiff in this, but I'm doing this alongside all of you. So I'm very grateful for the help.

Oh, we're grateful for you. Everybody hit subscribe here. More importantly, subscribe to Katie Fang's YouTube channel. Thanks, Katie.

Thanks, Ben.

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