Sometimes you need the full explanation to understand what’s happening in a lawsuit. The case Katie Phang brought to enforce the Epstein Files Transparency Act is among them.
We knew that from the start here at Civil Discourse and we’ve been taking the case seriously since the day it was filed. If you want a refresher to make sure you understand the lawsuit, we started here on May 1, the week it was filed, with Katie explaining the novel theory in Five Questions. By June, we were already celebrating her first success in the case, explained here. And in July, after failing to follow the court’s order to turn documents over to it for review, DOJ asked for two additional months, writing that the government “strongly disagrees” with the court’s order. But that’s working with this Judge. He ordered the government to turn over unredacted versions of specific documents so he could review them in camera (privately, with the plaintiff not included) to determine whether the government’s decision to withhold them was correct. They didn’t. So in August, he held a hearing. He walked through all of their failures, giving the government a chance to explain them: why couldn’t they do some of the things that they were ordered to do?
The orders Katie and I discussed today were the result of that hearing. And lest you think this is another painfully slow process that results in the administration getting away with ignoring the law, our assessment is that it’s something entirely different; it’s a judge giving the government enough rope to hang itself with before springing the trap. We discuss what Judge Sullivan may have learned from the contempt proceedings—his permission to conduct them is now on appeal—that Judge Boasberg attempted in the mass deportation cases, where the government ignored his orders to turn around the planes flying immigrants to CECOT prison, claiming they weren’t precise, they were oral, not written, and the planes were already out of U.S. territory when they were issued. Those are all garbage arguments, mere excuses, and yet they were enough to slip past the Supreme Court. It seems that Judge Sullivan is intent on understanding that this is no longer the Justice Department he was once used to having appear in his court. There is no more presumption of regularity.
Back in May, Katie told us, “This lawsuit is about making lawyers actually obey the law.” As we discussed today, that’s precisely what she’s successfully asking the court to make Donald Trump’s lawyer, someone whose salary we are all paying because he’s the Attorney General of the United States, do exactly that. It’s a lawsuit about accountability and, more importantly, successfully forcing this president, who has utter disdain for it, to comply with the rule of law. If you missed us live, Katie explains the Judge’s two most recent orders—they do very different things—and helps us see why she’s optimistic about what comes next.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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