DOJ Fights to Keep Blanche's Epstein Emails Sealed Ahead of His AG Confirmation Hearing

Todd Blanche is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, July 15, and Thursday, July 16, for his confirmation hearing as attorney general. Before he gets there, the Justice Department is fighting in court to keep his Epstein-related communications sealed.

The government watchdog group American Oversight sued in June demanding Blanche's emails and texts referencing Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, cross-referenced with terms including "Trump," "DJT," "POTUS," and "Tallahassee," according to The New Republic. The group wanted the records by July 14, timed to land before the hearing, arguing Blanche's role in handling what it calls the "Smith Report" raises questions about government integrity that the public deserves answered before senators vote.

The DOJ filed a 38-page memo Monday opposing the request. Its argument isn't that the records don't exist or are classified. It's procedural: granting an expedited request would "wreak havoc on agencies and the court" and let a well-resourced requester "leapfrog" others who filed FOIA requests earlier and are "waiting patiently in line," the department wrote, as reported by The New Republic.

FOIA queues are real, and letting anyone with a lawyer and a deadline jump the line would incentivize gaming the system. The Justice Department is using a bureaucratic fairness argument to keep the sitting acting attorney general's Epstein correspondence out of public view right before his confirmation vote. Even if the legal reasoning holds up, the timing looks like a stall.

Blanche has been dogged by Epstein-adjacent controversy since well before this lawsuit. He met personally with Maxwell, Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, while serving as deputy attorney general. He previously worked as Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer in several of the president's cases before joining DOJ, and he was confirmed as deputy attorney general on March 5, 2025, before becoming acting attorney general on April 2, 2026, following Pam Bondi's departure.

A Former Ally Turns Critic

The Epstein fight isn't Blanche's only problem heading into the hearing. Jonathan Gross, a former DOJ political appointee who worked on the department's "Weaponization Working Group," has gone public accusing his former bosses of "very sloppy" work and "sabotage," according to South Carolina Public Radio (an NPR affiliate).

Gross, a rabbi-turned-lawyer with no prior criminal defense experience before representing Jan. 6 defendants, joined the Justice Department's civil rights division last summer. His work on Jan. 6 cases had raised his profile among Trump allies, including former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, which drew the attention of senior Trump-appointed officials at DOJ. He was recruited to the Weaponization Working Group, an effort Bondi launched to investigate claims the FBI and DOJ were politicized under the Biden administration to target conservatives.

Gross told conservative activist Brandon Straka in an interview that the group had "no budget, no staff" and rarely met, saying of DOJ leadership, "they just don't care." This is a notable charge coming from inside the MAGA coalition, not from a Trump critic. It suggests the accountability push conservatives were promised on FBI and DOJ politicization under Biden hasn't materialized under Blanche's watch, at least according to one insider who expected it to.

Part of Trump's pitch to his base was that a second term would mean real accountability for what supporters believed was a weaponized Justice Department during the Biden years. If a Trump-appointed lawyer who was personally recruited for that exact mission is now saying the effort was hollow, that raises a credibility problem for Blanche regardless of what anyone thinks of the Epstein lawsuit.

Civil Rights Groups Raise a Different Set of Concerns

On the other side, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, joined by the Feminist Majority Foundation and other groups, sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee urging senators to reject Blanche's nomination, according to Ms. Magazine. The coalition alleges Blanche turned DOJ into "an instrument of Trump's personal rage and revenge," pointing to his March endorsement, made at CPAC, of deploying ICE officers to polling places, and to DOJ investigations of groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

These are allegations from an advocacy coalition, not findings from a court or inspector general. Federal law does generally restrict armed officers at polling places except in limited circumstances, and the coalition's concern about voter intimidation is worth taking seriously as a policy question. Whether ICE presence at polls would actually chill turnout, versus simply enforcing existing law, is a genuinely disputed point the letter doesn't resolve. It asserts the intimidation effect rather than proving it occurred.

More than 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a separate letter urging Congress to reject Blanche's nomination, The New Republic reported. None of this amounts to a finding of wrongdoing. No charges, indictment, or formal investigation of Blanche himself has been announced.

The Senate Judiciary Committee holds Blanche's hearing Wednesday and Thursday. Whether American Oversight's records surface before then, or whether the court sides with DOJ's line-jumping argument, remains unresolved. Senators will have to decide his fitness for the job largely without the emails at the center of the fight.