The journalist and lawyer suing Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spotted "the biggest red flag" after unredacted Epstein records were handed over.
In an episode of her podcast, Katie Phang discussed her case against Blanche that demands the release of the Epstein files with appropriate redactions. It marked the first time she's spoken about the case since the DOJ revealed that it handed over unredacted records from the Epstein files.
Judge Emmet Sullivan is reviewing the unredacted records privately and will decide what's worth releasing. However, in a court filing, the DOJ justified its redactions and mentioned an accidental redaction of Jeffrey Epstein's email address.
"Todd Blanche admitted in his filing yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein's email address was redacted. He calls it an inadvertent redaction, but it's been redacted and has since been lifted," Phang explained. "Now, you may not think that's a big deal, but I think it's a very, very, very big deal. And in fact, that is the biggest red flag that you could find from what has happened here."
The main argument in Phang's lawsuit is that the DOJ made improper redactions under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and she's demanding they either release the files or explain their redactions. The inadvertent redaction of Epstein's email address "shows that the way that the redactions were done here was wrong," Phang said.
"This wasn't some one-off mistake," Phang said. "We know for a fact that the Department of Justice released over and over again, hundreds and hundreds of times, the personal identifying information of several victims."
Phang explained that even though the DOJ "wants to say, 'Oops, sorry, we missed it,'" the release of victims' names but not Epstein's email address proves the "process was flawed. We know that it didn't work, and now we know that it also worked to protect the identity of Jeffrey Epstein, the main perpetrator of these crimes."