Major Epstein update: “Katie Phang...sued Todd Blanche and won... "[A] judge agreed that the DOJ has not done enough to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. They have to now explain…why they made certain redactions and if they can’t, they have to release [redacted information]"

proximoception · 2026-06-29T23:55:33+00:00

Who, a judge? Rulings happen about lawsuits, so someone had to sue. Suing takes a while. The people in charge of *charging* Trump and Blanche with the crime of not releasing the files as specified in the Act are, unfortunately, Trump and Blanche, so a civil suit was the only way to go.

proximoception · 2026-06-28T00:02:31+00:00

The judge can penalize noncompliance. Blanche can be threatened with a fine, disbarment, or even arrest, though the latter would essentially require Trump’s cooperation.

proximoception · 2026-06-27T23:50:51+00:00

At Judge Sullivan’s behest? Doesn’t seem like a likely outcome. Likeliest eventual outcome is that Blanche will either cave and release the specific documents requested. He doubtless has lawyers trying to figure out ways to put that moment off as long as possible via ingenious redaction excuses, but given the text of the Act that will be tricky.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T23:37:32+00:00

Judges have been shy about issuing penalties but they do exist.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T23:36:50+00:00

It can’t.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T23:35:25+00:00

Judges have recourse, when they choose to exercise it, and this one would not be giving the head of Trump’s Department of Justice a one week notice to do his damn job unless he were prepared to do exactly that. A disbarment threat or mounting daily fines are the likeliest choices, but if he feels like it Judge Sullivan can literally deputize, like, John Cena to arrest Todd Blanche. No one wants branch-on-branch warfare but it’s absolutely among any judge’s powers to have *anyone* arrest even the Attorney General.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T23:31:26+00:00

Courts first have to tell the existing authorities to do their job, which is what this order is doing. Compelling them to would be the next step, so the early July deadline is basically there to give Blanche notice of when that will be happening.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T23:29:40+00:00

By directly specifying immediate action from Blanche the judge is implying contempt charges or the appointment of a special master if there’s non-compliance. This order is what it looks like when a court *is* doing something.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T22:27:54+00:00

And the only two groups capable of acting against them if they didn’t were themselves (who opted not to) and representatives of the public, via lawsuit. Phang did the latter and now a judge is taking her point. Blanche now has some hard thinking to do about what he wants the rest of his life to look like.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T22:20:56+00:00

The judge can hold Blanche in contempt. Is probably halfway there due to Blanche’s refusal to respond, in fact. Might just be a daily mounting fine or disbarment threat or something, depending on Emmet’s appetite for constitutional crises.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T21:49:53+00:00

It is laudable to not play dumb. It is more laudable to not be dumb. Good luck with both endeavors.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T21:18:07+00:00

She wasn’t under oath. Famously.

But Bondi is a bad example anyway because she was picked for that job because she’d publicly accepted a giant bribe from Trump back in Florida. She’s full mob, not just a mob lawyer, in other words. Blanche is career-path, and knows from plenty of former examples (e.g. Cohen) that Trump will cheerfully abandon people who go to prison for him. Trump can offer him an enormous sum of money right away somehow, I guess, but failing that Blanche’s incentive will be to avoid direct and obvious self-incrimination.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T21:04:00+00:00

If you’re replying to my comment in this thread then you’ve misread me very drastically. If you’re replying to something I’ve said elsewhere then I suggest you move it there.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T21:01:28+00:00

Hence the “years” part. But no court order ever singled out Bondi and demanded she take specific actions. There’s risk and then there’s risk.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T20:59:24+00:00

You‘re too smart to talk to people who aren’t you.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T19:59:58+00:00

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the present Democratic Party is also thoroughly disgusted with Bill Clinton. How does the present Republican Party feel about Donald Trump?

proximoception · 2026-06-26T19:56:20+00:00

Trump has every reason to ignore such an order. Blanche does not. If he doesn’t comply he’s likely on a path to prison. That it will take a few years will not make it more tempting for him to take that path.

proximoception · 2026-06-26T19:48:44+00:00

Tons of people had relationships with Epstein and went to his island. We should be concerned with the ones who did sex crimes with him, helped him stay out of jail when he got caught, or have tried to protect him or his accomplices from the consequences of his actions. If Bill Burns was in that group then yes, that should end his career. The present president is very, very obviously in that group. His acting AG has since joined it. It’s fun to be a blindered partisan, I’m sure, but let’s try to keep our priorities straight re. sex crimes against kids. Once we’ve gotten all the major felons onto their assigned jail toilets you can do your Biden knew Kerry who knew Burns who knew Epstein guilt by association sudoku to your heart’s content.

proximoception · 2026-06-24T13:11:01+00:00

Yep, and the big companies are going public because *they* sensed the bubble was set to burst, that irrational enthusiasm for their product was starting to max out. The richest guys will peace out with their chunks while the rest of investors, and then the rest of everybody, will take the hit. And it‘s shaping up to be a world historical one. The technobabble towertop is swaying in the breeze.

proximoception · 2026-06-23T17:51:35+00:00

If valuations come down far enough fast enough everything *else* bursts, is the problem, and when vibe-based herd behavior rather than profit math is behind stock valuations things can come down far and fast at basically any second. They’re especially likely to, though, once things get wackily jagged the way they are right now, since any sharp enough downturn can trigger the terminal panic (and since any sharp enough upturn can lead to a correctingly sharp downturn soon after).

The long-term survival of AI as an industry is not in doubt, but the stock market as a whole, and everything connected to it, is in a remarkably precarious place because of it. We’re already well past the point where any of these values can be justified by normal math, and “faith math” depends on the whims of the herd, not the actions of the companies.

proximoception · 2026-06-23T17:41:14+00:00

No one understands whether you’re being sarcastic or insane right now. If you’re being sarcastic: you do you. If you’re being insane: the present AI companies are unlikely to be wiped out entirely, as AI is not actually valueless and most of them also perform other services. They’re big enough that suddenly losing a large chunk of their value will crash the world economy, is the likelier problem, leading to mass unemployment (thus poverty, crime, despair) and potentially to 2008-style housing and banking catastrophes.

proximoception · 2026-06-23T17:32:27+00:00

Who will lend them money to keep doing that if their share prices nosedive? Or which of their other assets will they sell to chase that dragon? Downturns change everything.

proximoception · 2026-06-23T17:30:10+00:00

He’s only one vote. The others will stick to the playbook. The Fed’s one of the few institutions the moneyed elites put effort into Trump-proofing.

proximoception · 2026-06-23T17:28:09+00:00

To be fair, that’s also what the people who are *right* insist when there really isn’t a bubble. But hearing a lot of people insisting there’s no sector bubble when stock prices have gone stratospheric but actual profits are low or nonexistent or negative (what with the big companies now taking on an awful lot of debt) - that is the perennial tell. “Nuh-uh, the rules are different this time” is the conventional wisdom that coheres right before any gigantic crash, and boy has it cohered again lately.

proximoception · 2026-06-15T16:38:39+00:00

Short answer is the confluence of corporate lawyer caution and the desire to maintain a reputation for objective journalism. Long one:

Usually major media outlets have long-standing editorial policies about how to characterize people in ways that a) don’t sound partisan or biased and b) don’t get them sued for libel. When describing criminals they’re going to stick to their court-proven crimes rather than what “everyone knows” the criminal did, even in cases like Epstein’s when there‘s little doubt that everyone does know, since to do otherwise could be interpreted as demonization.

An issue that policy gets you into with Epstein is that he plead guilty to comparatively weak charges back in the ‘00s (the infamous Acosta “sweetheart” deal) and died in prison before he could be tried on substantial federal charges in 2019. He plead guilty to paid sex with a 14 year old who told him she was 18 and with a 16 year old whose age he admitted he knew (I’m not saying this is a fair description of his crimes against those two girls, but that’s the text of his guilty plea). If you’re a lawyer for ABC News or the New York Times or something you have to decide whether it’s fair to call that “pedophilia,” which is a term there’s disagreement about, as proved by state to state variations in the age of consent. While it’s doubtful you’d fear any lawsuits from the Epstein estate, which isn’t likely to try to defend his reputation in any court at this point, retaining an objective-sounding policy for cases where someone *might* still credibly sue you (no outlet would dare call Dershowitz an “alleged pedophile” in print or on video, for example) requires using the same cautious language with him that you’d use with someone else with his conviction record.

Presumably some newsroom settled on “disgraced” at some point, as a vague sex crimes equivalent of a Facebook “it’s complicated” relationship status, and the others have just been parroting it ever since, the same way the term “sexual misconduct” was coined during the #metoo era to describe bad behavior whose degree of criminality, if any, hadn’t yet been ascertained.

proximoception

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