The DOJ argues a judge can’t appoint a monitor over its Epstein files release
If you care about the release of the Epstein Files - you’ll want to read this.
Late last night - while you were hopefully doing something more fun than reading federal court filings - the Department of Justice quietly argued that a judge has no authority to appoint a monitor to make sure they actually release the Epstein files.
Let me back up.
As you probably know, in November, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It passed 427 to 1. The Senate approved it unanimously. Even in this Congress, that’s a political miracle. Everyone - left, right, MAGA, progressive - agreed on one thing: release the files.
Trump signed it. The deadline was December 19.
It is now mid-January. Less than one percent of the files have been released. One percent. Out of over two million documents.
So Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie - the Democrat and Republican who co-sponsored the bill - went to the judge and said hey, maybe we need an independent monitor here, because the DOJ clearly cannot be trusted to police itself. Their exact words: “Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act.”
The DOJ’s response?
The judge can’t make us do that. Khanna and Massie don’t have standing. They’re not parties to the Maxwell case. Sorry, rules are rules.
This is the legal equivalent of “you can’t sit with us” except the lunch table is two million pages of evidence about a sex trafficking operation and the mean girls work for the president.
And here’s where it gets really fun.
Remember when Pam Bondi said the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now”?
That was February.
By July, her DOJ released a memo saying actually there’s no client list, no evidence of blackmail, nothing to see here. The same DOJ whose number two, Todd Blanche, sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell herself for two days - while Trump said of a pardon, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.” The same Ghislaine Maxwell who’s now chilling in a minimum security prison - where, according to a whistleblower who went to Rep. Jamie Raskin, she gets time with a service dog in training.
A puppy. The woman who trafficked children for Jeffrey Epstein reportedly gets puppy time.
But sure, let’s talk about standing.
The files that have been released - that glorious one percent - included faulty redactions that users were able to reverse. Turns out not everything blacked out was victim information. Some of it was findings about the trafficking ring itself - in a 2021 Virgin Islands court filing the DOJ reposted with the same botched redactions. And one file they released was an unverified FBI tip claiming Trump witnessed something I genuinely cannot type without feeling sick - look it up if you want nightmares.
The DOJ missed the deadline to explain its redactions on January 3rd. You know what else happened January 3rd? Trump invaded Venezuela. Captured its president. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Now they’ve got 400 lawyers working on “victim privacy reviews” while two million documents sit in a vault. The Transparency Act gave them 30 days. They’ve decided 30 days means “eventually, maybe, if we feel like it, and you can’t make us.”
Thomas Massie - a Republican - said the quiet part loud: “If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can’t be released. So this might be a big smoke screen, these investigations, to open a bunch of them as a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.”
That’s a Republican saying Trump’s DOJ might be running interference to hide evidence about a sex trafficking ring.
The polls are brutal. 56% of Americans disapprove of how Trump’s handling the files. 49% think he’s actively covering up Epstein’s crimes. And 74% of Republicans - his own base - support releasing everything.
But the DOJ says the court can’t appoint a monitor. The congressmen who wrote the law don’t have standing. The deadline doesn’t matter. The one percent is fine actually.
Nothing says innocent like two million pages of “trust me bro.”
SOURCES
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-files-bonkers-motion-to-keep-epstein-files-sealed
https://apnews.com/article/epstein-congress-neutral-expert-dfff6c2f06162a4a7a637fe22c4e2dc1
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-500-people-reviewing-millions-of-pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein_Files_Transparency_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein_files
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said the DOJ argued no judge can make it release the Epstein files - it argued a judge can’t appoint a monitor to oversee the release, and that Khanna and Massie have no standing to ask. It said Pam Bondi met with Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer about a pardon - it was her deputy, Todd Blanche, who met with Maxwell herself. It said the DOJ was redacting findings about the trafficking ring - those botched redactions came from a 2021 Virgin Islands court filing the DOJ reposted. And it said the DOJ redacted an FBI tip about Trump - the DOJ released that tip, and its claims haven’t been substantiated.
Update, September 28th, 2026: The puppy line now says the claim comes from a whistleblower who went to Rep. Jamie Raskin, and one line now says not everything blacked out was victim information.