A legal expert suing the Justice Department argues Todd Blanche's latest court submission points to evidence that quietly vanished.
Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang, who is suing Attorney General Todd Blanche for unredacted Epstein records, said in a Thursday episode for the "Katie Phang News" channel that the FBI's handwritten notes from the last of four 2019 interviews with a woman who alleges Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump sexually assaulted her as a teenager have never surfaced and that Blanche's recent notice of compliance does not explain why. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Blanche on September 16 to submit for private review the notes underlying FBI reports from interviews conducted July 24, August 7, August 20 and October 16, 2019.
Blanche told the court in an October 5 filing that he had turned over handwritten notes "showing that the handwritten files are duplicative of the typed reports," along with 2021 emails from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York "describing collection efforts."
Phang said she believes those emails are an attempt to account for a missing fourth set, citing April reporting by the Post and Courier, which reviewed the unredacted notes and found none for the final interview.
"Todd Blanche is trying to cover his a— and show emails, internal emails at the SDNY, U.S. Attorney's Office from 2021, stating how they were trying to collect and find those interview notes," Phang said, calling it "supposition on my part."
"If the DOJ doesn't have them, then the FBI has them," she said. "So, he's just going to hide behind an excuse that we've looked for it, but we can't find it. So, how do you say that you've complied? You can't."
Phang said the gap goes back years, pointing to a document in the public Epstein library listing non-testifying witness material given to Ghislaine Maxwell's defense in 2020. Under the woman's case number, interview notes appear beneath three of the four FBI reports but not the last.
"That means as far back as 2020, they couldn't find the interview notes or they never turned them over," Phang said. "I don't know. But it's worth an explanation from the DOJ."
Agents flagged the woman's interviews for special care, typing "protect source" at the top of the reports and stamping them "confidential," according to the Post and Courier.
"Her interview notes are so important that you have to put protect source at the top and confidential at the bottom," Phang said. "And now you can't find the handwritten notes for the fourth interview."