The Justice Department was back in front of U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Aug. 13, 2026, and it arrived having already admitted the central point against it. In an earlier ruling, Sullivan wrote that 'The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act,' the Epstein Files Transparency Act that Congress passed with a hard disclosure deadline of Dec. 19, 2025 [1][2].
The case is Phang v. Blanche, docket 1:26-cv-01417, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia [1]. It was brought by Katie Phang, a Miami-based lawyer and journalist who has reported extensively on Jeffrey Epstein and his network [1]. On June 25, 2026, Sullivan granted Phang a preliminary injunction, finding her likely to succeed on her Administrative Procedure Act claims and ordering the Department either to produce specified records with certain redactions removed, review foreign-language materials, and publish the redaction logs the statute requires, or to explain why the challenged redactions should stand [1].
What the government is holding back is specific. The disputed materials include handwritten notes from interviews with a woman who made unsubstantiated allegations against President Trump, files the Department redacted on the basis of victim requests that Sullivan found were not documented, and records DOJ says are 'substantially similar' to FBI reports it has already released [2]. Sullivan ordered the Department to release the materials or justify each withholding [2].
The Department's answer has been to argue the redactions were lawful and to ask for time. Under Attorney General Todd Blanche, DOJ requested a delay of roughly two months in the case [2]. At the Aug. 13 status conference, the court heard oral arguments from both sides [1]. What Sullivan decided at that hearing, if he decided anything, could not be confirmed from the records available for this piece.
That matters because of what is reportedly waiting on his desk. A $1,000-a-day contempt sanction has been described in secondary reporting as briefed and awaiting the judge's signature. No fetched source in this account confirms that such a fine has been issued, or that it has been signed, so it is set down here as a reported possibility and nothing firmer. The distinction is the whole point: a conceded violation is on the record, a remedy is not.
For now the shape of the dispute is stable even if its outcome is not. Congress ordered the files out by December. The Attorney General has acknowledged missing that command. A federal judge has ordered production or justification and is being asked to wait two more months before enforcing it. Every day that question stays open is a day the documents stay sealed.
