No matter if Blanche is AG now, which may have been noted in passing somewhere, he still hasn’t figured out that the judge means what he says. Blanche keeps tapdancing around, trying to do an end run around the order. It hasn’t worked thus far. It’s not going to work now. It’s not going to work in the future. He needs to learn he can’t schmooze a judge, and it may be about the time he’s going to learn that the hard way. Appreciation for Raw Story:
A federal judge’s “unexpected” demand to Attorney General Todd Blanche regarding the Epstein files proves a bedrock judicial principle is “on life support,” a legal expert argued Sunday. Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan gave Blanche five days to provide the court with unredacted versions of certain Epstein-related files for private review as it litigates a lawsuit filed by lawyer and media figure Katie Phang. Phang sued Blanche for allegedly violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act by unlawfully redacting certain files.
It shouldn’t have to be like this. You shouldn’t have to sue the AG for Epstein information. But Blanche keeps acting like the government has something to hide, and that has the judge keeping an eagle eye on him. You know, to paraphrase, methinks the man doth protest too much. If he had done what he was supposed to at the beginning, it would have been over and done with. Zip, zoom, finished. But no. And we’re only discussing a handful of files here, not the entire second half of the files that haven’t been released yet and were due months ago. This is just a few.
Blanche provided the court with an explanation as to why certain files were redacted, but Sullivan, doubting Blanche’s explanation, demanded he provide proof supporting his claims. Such a demand, as noted by Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, demonstrated how the Trump administration had all but gutted the key judicial principle known as the “presumption of regularity.”
“It was commonly used to advance the idea that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, courts should presume government employees, including DOJ lawyers, acted properly in the execution of their duties. Now it’s on life support, and Judge Sullivan’s order is another nail in its coffin,” Vance wrote in an analysis published Saturday on her Substack.
The problem here is that it’s the DoJ that is playing fast and loose. They’ve shown that they are absolutely political. They have shown they’re there to help Trump. They are heavily biased (remember those planes to CECOT?). We can’t even say they’re actually lawyers anymore. They’re shills who are here to do what Trump demands and block the Epstein file releases as much as possible. You can’t go to the AG if he’s part of the problem.
“This most recent order suggests that Judge Sullivan doesn’t believe the government when it says something is the case, even when that ‘something’ is as simple as the identity of the person in a ‘to’ line in an email. But the government has acted like it has something to hide, even after Congress passed the Transparency Act and Trump signed it into law.”
“So the Judge isn’t accepting what the government has represented to it as truthful, and is requiring documentation to support its claims,” Vance wrote. “Under any other president, the Attorney General would have been disturbed by the suggestion prosecutors couldn’t be trusted. There would be disciplinary review. But here, the acting Attorney General is the defendant in the case.
It’s paradigmatic of how far the DOJ has fallen.”
BOOM. There it is. How far the DoJ has fallen. There’s no justice about it. Except that DOT is already taken; it should be the DoT Department of Trump. Even the rule of law is suffering, both under SCOTUS, and in “everyday” courts. Look at what ICE has gotten away with. There will be no justice for those they killed. We are losing belief in the courts because they seem to only be there as a token and not actually function as courts. Fortunately, there are still people like Judge Sullivan who believe in the law and will not put up with any nonsense in their courtrooms. That’s something.
See you soon!
Friends, I know everybody begs you for money. I promise you that, of all the outlets bugging you for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest-working. We’re a bunch of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. But the rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the ability to continue our quest to tell the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
