A legal expert slammed Todd Blanche's court filing that confessed he missed a deadline and 'messed up' as she sued him.
In a recent episode of her podcast, lawyer and journalist Katie Phang described recent developments with her case against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who's inching closer to securing the permanent attorney general role. Blanche admitted in a recent court filing that he missed a deadline to answer a lawsuit over redactions in the Epstein files, but blamed it on "excusable neglect," Phang explained.
"There, my friends, is the confession by Todd Blanche that he blew the deadline, 'Excusable neglect,'" Phang said. "Well, isn't that an admission that you messed up, but you have a quote, 'excusable,' reason why you did?"
Phang is suing Blanche for more unredacted Epstein files or an explanation of why the Department of Justice redacted what it did. She alleges the DOJ wrongly redacted the Epstein files and violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Blanche missed a June 29 deadline to answer Phang's complaint. Even though he had 60 days to respond, he filed nothing and never asked for an extension, but his latest filing is a motion to erase the missed deadline and give him more time to respond.
However, the filing is "more confessions by Todd Blanche that he blew the deadline," Phang said, while seeing it as a reason to doubt Blanche's suitability to be attorney general.
"Do you think somebody like that should be the Attorney General of the United States? If he can't actually handle a basic deadline like responding to a lawsuit?" Phang said. "Makes you wonder how he can adequately and competently represent the people of the United States of America?"
Phang called out parts of the filing that described the blown deadline as "regrettable" and "not intentional," saying what really happened is, "You're being caught with your pants down, and now you're scrambling because you're having a really big oh sh— moment."