Legal AF by MeidasTouch - DOJ Faces Scrutiny Over Handwritten FBI Notes in Case Involving Trump Accuser

Starting point is 00:00:00 Federal Senior Status Judge Emmett Sullivan has just issued an order giving the Department of Justice until early next week to tell him whether he's been lied to by the Department of Justice because Katie Fang's lawyers have made a very good point in a filing that they just made a notice to the court that when Andrew Block on behalf of Todd Blanche about the Epstein file and the production was asked questions about the handwritten 302. FBI notes of interviews of a person who said she was sexually abused by Donald Trump when she was 13 years old? They said the reason they can't produce the handwritten notes is because they don't produce the handwritten notes. The type written notes should suffice and they don't generally produce the handwritten notes, except they do, except that was a misstatement or a lie in court to a federal judge. The notice to the court filed by Katie Fang's lawyers just in the last couple of hours says that when he was asked, when Andrew Block was asked by the judge, the court asked

Starting point is 00:01:05 defendants counsel whether defendant has produced other handwritten FBI interview notes that form the basis for 302 reports. The defendant's counsel said, to my knowledge, not with respect to 302s. And then Katie Fang's lawyers proceeded to provide at least over a hundred examples in the Epstein files alone where the handwritten 302s not about Donald Trump were produced. And now they've asked the judge to find out why he was, why he was lied to effectively in court. And the judge has turned around with a new order and said, yeah, I want to hear from everybody. And I mean you, Mr. Block and Todd Blanche, by next Thursday. I'm Michael Popock. You're on legal life on Friday. We just got this hot off the presses and I wanted to jump on here. This is a case that was brought by Katie Fang a couple

Starting point is 00:01:52 of months ago in order to get the complete production of the Epstein files and to have a special master appointed by a judge in order to do it. Not just the couple of million that have been produced, but the several million that haven't been produced. The couple hundred thousand pages that have been blocked out and not given to the American people, the documents about Donald Trump that have not been produced, the documents that are in a foreign language that haven't been translated, and so on. She's won on a preliminary injunction about five categories of documents, and yet still, the Department of Justice refused to produce documents, and they keep telling the judge to go pound sand. At least,

Starting point is 00:02:28 last week's hearing, as you know from my reporting, the judge was not happy. The judge was perturbed. The judge was angry. The judge said, why, Mr. Block, are you here without the information that I've demanded? And I've commanded you to bring with you. He said, well, if you just issue another order, he said, should my next order say, I really mean it this time? And then he started using the contempt word, like I'm going to find the Department of Justice in contempt. He then turned to the lawyer for Katie Fang, Brendan Ballou, who's been on with me before, and said, why don't you draft the order? Draft the next order for my review. No, no, you don't have to show it to the other side. Just you and me. Send it to me, and we'll see what happens. That's always a good

Starting point is 00:03:10 sign. When the judge tells you, and not both parties, to draft the order, you hurry up and draft your order. So I was expecting the proposed order, which, and kudos to Brendan Ballou's team of public integrity. They actually use the same font as this judge loves courier font and they put it in courier. Such small things, but it really matters. You're on legal AF YouTube channel, by the way, hit that free subscribe button. So I see it and it has to do with the redaction log. You know, like did you prepare the redaction log? And if you didn't, why didn't you? And if you did, where is it? And how many people are involved? And let's get an affidavit with somebody by not, with knowledge. And I'm like, well, this is interesting. This is one part of the.

Starting point is 00:03:53 redaction log. If you want to know more about what happened at that hearing, here's a clip of my interview with Brendan last week. Play the clip. Talk about what went down at that hearing. It was a pretty crazy two hours, you know, so just to set the baseline here, the department, you know, we want a preliminary injunction requiring DOJ to produce a whole bunch of information or show cause why they couldn't. DOJ has just repeatedly failed to comply with the court's order here and has failed to reply to comply with follow-on orders. And so this was really a chance for the judge to bring the parties in and understand, okay, why Department of Justice are you not following these orders? And what am I, Judge Sullivan, going to do about it? And to your point, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:33 I want to be diplomatic here. I want to be respectful, but it was a shocking sort of experience for me, having been at the Department of Justice to see the arguments that they were making or the arguments that they weren't making in that, you know, they really didn't seem to have a plan for the hearing or for what the judge's arguments were going to be, or questions were going to be. Sort of basic questions about the case, what their responses were. There were just long periods of silence in the courtroom as the Department of Justice, I think, struggled to articulate why it couldn't follow the law here. So I had never really been in a hearing like that where one side was just silent on their own

Starting point is 00:05:17 arguments, just saying that they were going to do things and wouldn't explain why. And I think that made the follow-on conversation, which was Judge Sullivan's essentially half-hour-long description of having previously found the Department of Justice in contempt more than a decade ago. I think really chilling because I think he really made clear the profound professional consequences that follow you if you are in fact held in contempt. I am certain that Judge Sullivan does not want that to happen, but I am hopeful that his message resonated with the government lawyers. And then I get a that this notice to the court. I'm like, what is this?

Starting point is 00:05:52 Oh, wait to you here. We'll post it up on LegalAF Substack for your review. It says on page one, in the June 25, 2026 preliminary injunction order, which we were just referring to in the hearing, the court ordered defendant to either produce to the public the handwritten FBI interview notes that form the basis for certain 302s.

Starting point is 00:06:15 Those are official FBI interview forms, these are all have to do with Donald Trump and that one witness who says that when she was 13, she was sexually abused. Defendant claim that he did not produce the notes for two reasons. This is Blanche. One, they're duplicative of what the typewritten notes say. Well, that's not what the Epstein Files Transparency Act says. That's not an exception.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Well, if something's typed up, you don't have to also do the handwritten notes. There's lots in the handwritten notes that are not typed up. and two, there's a risk of inadvertent disclosure of victim information. Okay. So they remind the court and they provide the transcript that during the hearing that happened last week, the court asked defendant's counsel whether the defendant had produced other handwritten FBI interview notes, which form the basis of 302 reports that don't relate to Donald Trump. And Andrew Block, the lawyer for Donald Trump and for Todd Blanche, said, to my knowledge, not with respect to the 302s.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Here's how Katie Fang's lawyers address that. Defendants' counsel is not correct. See, they're a lot nicer than I am. I would have said defendants counsel lied. Defendant has, in fact, produced handwritten FBI interview notes underlying 302 reports, and then they proceed to attach them. I'm going to read from some of them just so you get the sense of what not everything in a handwritten note ends up in the official typewritten version because the person that's doing

Starting point is 00:07:42 the interview notes uses their discretion on how they're going to rewrite them. That's why you want to see the underlying handwritten notes. And then they attach them. They also say plaintiff has identified nearly 100 additional examples of handwritten interview notes produced by the defendant, and then they give a table on Exhibit D. They then say to the judge, respectfully, we request that the court consider whether defendants, the Blanche, stated justification for withholding the handwritten interview notes here, is consistent with defendant's production of other handwritten materials when conducting, it's when the judge conducts his in-camera, meaning his private personal review of the notes.

Starting point is 00:08:22 That's a nice way of saying, Judge, you just got lied to, and you should take that into account when you decide whether to produce to us the handwritten notes. Right now, the additional documents, the small binder of material that Andrew Block brought with him for Todd Blanche is with the judge. and they want him to know when reviewing it, there are other examples. Let me give you an example. We'll put up Exhibit A on the board. Well, exhibit, I'm sorry, Exhibit A is the transcript from the hearing.

Starting point is 00:08:54 Let's go up to Exhibit B. Again, this is not revealing any victim identifying information. And I'll skip the part that does. Do you like teachers or classes? I give scholarships. Where are you from? Palm Beach, brothers, poor, didn't have a lot of money, said they could help. Perfect grooming of 14-year-old was the first time on a flight.

Starting point is 00:09:20 They took me to see Lion King. 2001, approximately stopped contact, but I turned 21. I co-signed an apartment, et cetera, et cetera. This goes on for pages and pages and pages. And then when you, and talking about how that she was attacked and felt paralyzed, how much she was paid for sexual encounters that were arranged by Jeffrey Epstein. And this goes on, and this was produced. This is produced already.

Starting point is 00:09:46 Exhibit C is the handwritten version of that, which shows how much was left out between the handwriting and the typedwritten report, which is why Katie Fangside wants it, obviously. And then you've got all of the examples. If you go to Exhibit D, we can put that up on the screen. all of the examples where the handwritten 302 reports were produced, except not what it relates to Donald Trump. Now, the judge, you never can tell from how he writes, because he keeps his cards very close to his black robe.

Starting point is 00:10:26 But he's not happy. I can tell you that from having appeared in front of judges, just like Judge Sullivan. And he is told the Trump side, they have until the middle of next week to respond to the proposed order about the redaction log and to respond to the new notice of filing to the court about the handwritten 302s and the misstatement that was made by the lawyer in the courtroom. We are moving one step closer folks to having Judge Sullivan take this task away from the Department of Justice and assign a former federal judge to serve a special

Starting point is 00:11:09 master and officer of the court to review not just the documents that still exist that haven't been produced, these fights over the 302s and other things. Oh, no. To go back since Genesis 1-1 and look at every document and source material and file to make sure that the prior production was appropriate, which we know it wasn't, make sure the things that were redacted are unredacted, make sure that every electronic filing cabinet or real filing cabinet was searched and make a report to the judge because the Justice Department has forfeited its right to continue to run the Epstein document production. This is what we've wanted since the very beginning. This is the only way to do justice, not just for journalists and commentators, but for the survivors,

Starting point is 00:11:59 first and foremost, is to get everything. And this judge, I think is doing this in the steps necessary to support a record on appeal. Answer the questions. Tell me why you produced handwritten notes in the past but not related to Donald Trump. Let's all get together. You can brief the issue in front of me and then I'm going to issue my order. I think the order is going to be an order of contempt. I think the order of contempt is going to bring sanctions against the Department of Justice. I think it's going to be an order to show cause why a special master shouldn't be appointed to take this task away from the Department of Justice? I think all of that's about to happen. And this is the first step. I'll

Starting point is 00:12:44 continue to follow it. You're here on Friday afternoon. Just came hot off the process. I wanted to jump on and talk to you. Hit the free subscribe button here on Legal AF YouTube channel. Until my next report, I'm Michael Pope Buck. Can't get your fill of Legal AF. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing in the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F. What else? All the other contributors from legal a layoff are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal A-F on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Bye.

Legal AF by MeidasTouch - DOJ Faces Scrutiny Over Handwritten FBI Notes in Case Involving Trump Accuser

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