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[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and length]
Mary Trump: I spoke with my friend, the awesome Katie Phang, host of The Katie Phang Show, about a lawsuit she filed against the DOJ and Todd Blanche over their egregious violations of the Epstein Transparency Act. And also, why is it that other countries are so much better at holding Epstein associates and co conspirators accountable? Enjoy.
Mary Trump: I am here with the amazing, wonderful, fabulous Katie Phang, and things are going to get a little dark, kind of like the inside of a casino. So, Katie, you have been one of the few people who has kept focusing attention on the despicable coverup going on over at Donald Trump and Todd Blanche’s DOJ. Of course, I’m talking about the Epstein files. You filed a lawsuit, so I want you to fill us in on those developments. And I also want to talk about Blanche’s confirmation and the fact that he was voted out of committee for the full vote in front of the Senate, and recent developments with the, I think not alleged anymore, suicide of one of Epstein’s closest associates in France, Jean Luc Brunel.
I know you were just over in Paris, so you were right there when that happened, which is kind of fascinating. So, one, tell us a bit about the case and how it’s going because I know there were some recent developments.
Katie Phang: Yeah, recently, as in I just finished recording an episode for my YouTube channel. It’ll go up in about an hour. So, for those of you who are tuning in, it’ll go up around 1:30 Eastern. But I literally just got a filing from Todd Blanche where he admitted that he blew the deadline to respond to my complaint. I was like, how can somebody be that incompetent, even legally, and want to be the Attorney General of the United States of America? For me, that was just jaw dropping.
For those of you who aren’t in the legal field, the short of it is, when you sue somebody, the rules of procedure give a specific window of time by which you have to answer that complaint. You can either answer it by admitting and denying the allegations that have been made, or you can move to dismiss as another example of something to be done.
In this instance, the deadline was June 29th, and it’s August 6th. It was only after my lawyers emailed Blanche’s DOJ last week and said, “Are you ever going to plan on responding to this lawsuit?” And they were like, “What are you talking about?” And my lawyers were like, “Your answer was due on June 29th.” They were like, “Oh, no, no, no. Look, we don’t even have to answer you because we’ve been litigating this preliminary injunction thing.” And we’re like, “No, no, that’s dead too. That was entered in our favor on June 15th. What are you talking about?”
So there’s this back and forth, and it’s an attachment as an exhibit to our motion to compel him to answer my lawsuit. You’ll see that they end up getting progressively more concerned because they realize this is actually legitimate. So we filed this motion late yesterday, and within seconds they filed their own motion.
Their motion is outrageous because, in their motion, they say to the judge who entered the order granting my preliminary injunction, “Judge, you haven’t ruled on the preliminary injunction issue yet, and that’s what we’ve been litigating over the last few weeks. And by the way, yeah, we didn’t actually respond by the deadline, but it was unintentional and it really is excusable, and we’re sorry. And by the way, what we want you to do is stay, as in pause, all deadlines in Katie Phang’s lawsuit.”
Then they want to do something in Latin. The phrase is nunc pro tunc, which basically means in English, “We want you to turn back the hands of time to when the due date was, which was June 29th, and we want you to give us more time.” Under the law, the only way you can do that, Mary, is if there is excusable neglect by way of good cause, meaning it can’t just be my dog ate my homework.
It has to be good cause. When you don’t answer a complaint, everything is deemed to be admitted in the complaint and you get a default entered against you, which means you don’t have any defenses anymore to what is alleged in my lawsuit. So not only do they want to wind back the hands of time to the end of June, they then want the judge to give them an additional 60 days after he rules on the preliminary injunction.
You’ll hear it in my episode, but here’s a little preview. The gaslighting is just on the daily with these people, and they must either think that we’re stupid as lawyers or that we’re stupid as Americans. But we’re all paying attention to this lawsuit because this man wants to be the Attorney General of the United States.
In a case that is the only one dealing with the Epstein files right now, you would think he’d be paying attention to this, especially seeing how it really is a big point of contention for his nomination to be the Attorney General. And yet they’re fighting with us, claiming that they didn’t blow a deadline. Yet, when push came to shove, they filed a motion asking for forgiveness from the judge and then saying, “Judge, by the way, not only did we blow the deadline, but you need to go back in time, you need to give us more time, and you need to give us even more time.”
But really, Mary, it kind of speaks thematically to what we all know is the important thing here, which is it just feeds the monster of, what are you trying to hide? All you have to do is turn these files over to the American people, but do it the right way, which is the whole crux of my lawsuit.
Katie Phang: Redact the names appropriately. Don’t let people self identify as victims that we know are co conspirators so that you can protect them and never investigate them. That has become a real concern of mine, that the reason why Todd Blanche can, with a straight face, tell members of Congress under oath, as well as Epstein survivors, that “I don’t have any evidence,” is when you let everybody self identify as a victim, the next thing you know is Ghislaine Maxwell is self identifying as a victim.
Then, as a law enforcement investigative agency, you say, “Sorry, Mary, don’t have anybody to investigate because everybody is a victim of Jeffrey Epstein,” which is why it was this absurdity of Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls to himself. No, he trafficked them to other people. Well, look, what if they all come forward and say, “Well, I was duped. I was duped by Jeffrey, so I’m a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s, and that’s the reason why.” It is an outrageous turning on its head of the definition of victim.
Again, I know that there’s some gray area about people who were recruited and groomed and brought into his trafficking ring, and they also recruited and groomed other children to come in. But I do want to caution people. I’m not outing people. I’m just saying we need to be incredibly careful about the way that we allow this process to be.
In the meantime, we’ve also seen him tell the New Mexico Attorney General, who was forced to sue yesterday, “We can’t give you anything because we’ll be outing the victims in this case, and so we can’t give you stuff.” But we know that he doesn’t care about the victims. He told them, “Hurry up, get to the point. I don’t have anything for you. Come back to me when you’ve got something. In the meantime, go to the FBI.” But we know that they have.
I can’t imagine being in the shoes of these survivors and getting gaslit like this. I cannot imagine how cruel it is for the acting top cop in our country to be treating people like this right now.
Mary Trump: Katie, there’s so much there. And just the broader point is that this all speaks to the culture of misogyny that has been fostered in the Trump regime. We see it with the egregious Max Miller, who’s running for a seat in Ohio, even though he has been credibly accused of domestic abuse and child abuse.
Katie Phang: And emotional abuse. That’s really important too. The emotional abuse is what I’ve been really reading out of a lot of these communications.
Mary Trump: And just the thuggishness with which he’s defending himself. And what does Donald say? Because he’s Donald’s guy, he says he feels bad for Max Miller. So the contemptuousness with which people like Donald and Todd Blanche treat women who are victims of real violence and all kinds of abuse, including emotional and psychological abuse, should be disqualifying.
And yet here we are. Todd Blanche just got one step closer to being Attorney General of the United States of America. And he has gotten to this point because he cares about the rule of law? No, because he’s willing to carry Donald’s water. He’s willing to cover up for a lot of powerful people, allegedly. And this is one of the things that has been so stunning. I mean, I shouldn’t be stunned by it, actually.
Katie Phang: I struggle with the same thing, Mary, every time. I’m like, why am I surprised? I feel like, though, it’s a glimmer of our humanity that we keep that part of our humanity alive, right?
Mary Trump: Yeah. We should be shocked that he got out of Judiciary with the votes of two lame duck senators whose careers have been ended by Donald Trump because he assured them on a completely worthless piece of paper that this $1.776 billion slush fund wasn’t going to be a thing, even though he’s still letting Donald and his useless children off the hook for all of the financial crimes and the tax fraud they’ve committed.
That should have been enough, but as if that is the only reason Todd Blanche should be disqualified, his handling of the Epstein files has been grotesque. And here’s the thing. You mentioned earlier that one of the things about the DOJ’s handling of this lawsuit is just the sheer incompetence and contempt for the process. Now, this started with Pam Bondi, and Todd Blanche has just continued. The DOJ has been gutted. The DOJ had some of the most impeccably credentialed and brilliant civil servants doing work for the American people.
Seventy five percent of those people are gone. They’ve been replaced with hacks, which is why judges are used to presiding over cases the DOJ brings expecting the greatest prosecutorial talent, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Here’s the thing, though. Todd Blanche was a prosecutor for the SDNY. That is the Sovereign District of New York. He knows what he’s doing. And Katie, I think that makes it worse.
Katie Phang: Well, this just supports my contention that I’ve been saying for years, which is the enablers are the ones that get it done. I mean, Donald has the capacity on his own to think of either inane, stupid ideas or truly grotesque, horrific ones. But just like a gun needs the ammo, absent the ammo, the gun doesn’t have lethality to it. Just like that, Donald needs the enablers to make these things happen.
Historically, as we know, with his search for his Roy Cohn, Donald has looked for enablers, especially lawyers, to make this happen for him. The lawyers, if he didn’t have them, would not have gotten him where he is with his businesses, with his presidency, with the other things that he’s doing. And so I look at Blanche as the most recent useful patsy in a long line of useful patsies.
But I always said that Blanche, versus a Bondi or others, always occupied a different space for Donald. One, because of his misogyny, he’s never going to look at Blanche and say that Alina Habba, parking lot lawyer extraordinaire, or even Lindsey Halligan, insurance lawyer, that either one of those particular female attorneys could even carry the briefcase for Todd Blanche.
In his mind, remember, the reason why I call him convicted felon Donald Trump over and over and over again is because he was convicted of 34 felonies of falsification of business records. That is a crime that is a reflection of a lack of honesty. It is fraud. And the people who were responsible as his legal team were Todd Blanche and Emil Bove. It’s fascinating because, yeah, he lost other civil litigation with Alina Habba at the helm, but the criminal case, the only one that ever went to a jury, was that one with Alvin Bragg.
So you would think, as a client, frankly, if you lost his criminal case, “I’m a convicted felon,” as he sits right now, I don’t care if he’s appealed it, you would think, maybe I don’t love how good of a job Blanche and Bove did. But that’s where the loyalty kicks in on the part of Blanche and Bove. Bove gets his federal appeals court appointment for life on the Third Circuit, and Todd Blanche gets what he’s always wanted, which is to be the Attorney General of the United States. Why? Because they’ve both shown that they’re not going to continue to abide by their own oaths of office and that they would much rather pledge loyalty to their dear cult leader.
As a lawyer, I’m particularly troubled by it because I feel like there’s so much more that could be done by the licensing organizations that give people like Blanche and Bove their licenses. Although at this point, Blanche doesn’t need a law license to do what he’s doing. But I do think that they really should be doing more.
There’s a reason why, behind the scenes, and it’s utterly unreported by mainstream legacy media, Pam Bondi, for example, started, before she got jettisoned, changing how the DOJ processes bar complaints and instituted a policy where the bar complaints are actually handled internally at the DOJ, and external bar associations cannot even deal with those lawyers and their licenses until the internal DOJ process is completed. And you and I both know that’ll take forever, right? Even then, there may not be any type of censure.
So they’re really smart. For the stupidity that I like to talk about, there’s a level of wiliness. There’s a level of cleverness that happens. And the reason why we all kind of get surprised by it, honestly, Mary, is because we don’t operate in that headspace. I don’t wake up thinking of ways to hurt Americans. That’s what most decent people don’t do. They don’t wake up thinking of ways to hurt their fellow Americans. This is a totally different group and caliber of people. They are cut from the same cloth, and that cloth is something that I wouldn’t even let my dog near.
That is the problem that we have right now, which is they’re doing that and that’s how they operate. But they are the great facilitators and enablers because Donald couldn’t do this if they weren’t there going to court, if they weren’t there pushing these laws, if they weren’t there pushing their underlings to do all this dirty work with them.
Mary Trump: Yeah, it’s such a good point. If anybody thinks that Donald has come up with all of the ways to grift money off of the American taxpayer, or all of these crypto scams, or ways to enrich his children, or ways to manipulate the legal system to his benefit, no, he’s an idiot. He needs people like Todd Blanche and Scott Bessent and all of those other horrible people with whom he’s surrounded himself.
I think it’s also important to remember that, yes, this is for the benefit of Donald Trump because these people know they would not have access to the power they so desperately crave if they didn’t continue to do Donald’s bidding. But the larger project is to completely remake the system so it benefits them in the long run, and the oligarchs and the fascists. And that’s when it gets, again, not surprising because the Republican Party has shown itself to be what it is.
It should shock us, though, to our core that Republicans are willing to put Todd Blanche, who so clearly has nothing but contempt for the rule of law and the American people, as the Attorney General of the United States. I mean, it’s really shocking. Before we continue, please take a second to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Also, leave a comment below and let’s keep the conversation going. Thanks for watching.
Where do you think this lawsuit of yours is heading? What might we expect? And how does it, I don’t know, sorry, I’m thinking about Brunel and people in other countries who’ve actually paid a price for even being remotely connected to Jeffrey Epstein. And here we are in America continuing to cover up, protect, enrich, and empower people who potentially participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. So I’m sorry, I know there’s a lot there, but I think the fact that you brought this lawsuit is so important, but it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Katie Phang: No, it shouldn’t have been necessary. And we sit here today having this conversation on Substack, and it’s just another day that’s gone by that the law’s been violated. I mean, Todd Blanche is breaking a federal law every day. And the reason why it’s infuriating is the double standard. If you and I did that, we would be arrested, or we would be prosecuted, or we would be sued into oblivion.
So I feel like the permissive structure that’s been created to weaponize the judicial system and the legal system is obviously one we’ve seen where political opponents are now being victimized. And then we see, for example, the irony of ironies. Jeanine Pirro does the right thing by dropping the indictment against Olympic canoeist Davy Hearn and the misdemeanor complaints against three other people who never did anything wrong to the reflecting pool. And now she’s being excoriated by Trump and others in MAGA world for, ironically, doing the right thing.
She is certainly, like Tillis and Cornyn, not a profile in courage at all, but that’s kind of where we are. We’re now in this upside down world where somebody who does the right thing, especially in the legal world, gets punished by Trump, the DOJ, et cetera.
But when it comes to my lawsuit, I think what is another upside down world moment is shifting the burden to the victims to have to prove something that they never should have to prove. Having people either in the public or members of Congress saying, “Well, why don’t they just come and name names?” Having done, and continuing to do, a deeper dive on a daily basis into these worlds, it is not easy for any of them to come forward. Why? Because some of them have a Leon Black nondisclosure agreement that could punish them if they speak up.
Some of them have fears and threats of physical harm to themselves and to their family and their children if they speak up. But the reality is almost all of them have spoken up. And now the chilling effect that my friend and survivor Dani Bensky spoke of the other day has happened. You have them speaking up, you have them walking the halls of Congress, and then the next thing you know, Todd Blanche gets advanced out of Senate Judiciary, and neither Tillis nor Cornyn made the cornerstone of their objections the Epstein files. They made it the slush fund, and they made it the tax immunity deal.
Then Tillis himself got busted because he was supposed to meet with the survivors, and he has yet to meet with the survivors. So Tillis made Blanche meet with survivors. Blanche did the check the box performative moment, and then Tillis himself hasn’t even done it.
So what does that tell you, right? It tells you that the calculus for Tillis, Cornyn, and others isn’t, “Donald didn’t help me get reelected.” It’s, “I want to keep on making money when I leave Congress.” And part of that is staying in everybody’s good graces on the Republican side.
I’m so grateful that Senator Ron Wyden came out with his report two days ago because his report documented grotesque failures on the part of JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank to report suspicious activity on Jeffrey Epstein’s accounts until 2019. The guy is dead pretty much in 2019. That’s when they start reporting these things, even though they were required to do so. That was because the people who were in those positions of power were making so much money. And that’s also Todd Blanche, who will leave government one day and go and make a lot of money.
That is also Kathy Ruemmler, who I don’t care if she was in the Obama White House as counsel to Obama. She had the nerve to sit there and tell members of Congress, “Well, I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal,” or, “I had no idea. I got snowed by Jeffrey.” But no, if you really listen to what she said, she said Jeffrey Epstein brought Bill Gates to her table, and because of the Bill Gates relationship and the Rothschild relationship, she made so much money at Latham that that’s the reason why she kept that relationship.
It’s all about the money. So it’s not just big oil declaring record breaking profits in Q2 2026 because of this illegal war, and that’s also just ignoring climate change, which is going to mean my grandchildren are not going to have somewhere to probably live safely on this planet.
It is always profits over people, and it’s not just corporate profits over people. It’s also the individual decision that is made by a Kathy Ruemmler, who didn’t have to represent Epstein, who didn’t have to take on that case, who didn’t have to sit there and help him. She chose profits over people.
And that is happening now in Congress, where these, they call them lame duck, but they’re just lame, members of Congress are doing this personal calculus, which is always picking themselves and their bottom lines over the rest of us. Which is why I am baffled that it is not a layup decision to get rid of all of them and just get some new people into office in November, because it can’t get any worse unless maybe you keep them for another two more years. But it’s so human nature to me.
If you screw me over repeatedly, I’m not going to be your friend. I’m not going to support you. And I feel like this is such an easy decision to make, and yet I don’t understand the struggle. I just don’t get it at all. But listen, that’s the reason why we have some clarity when we speak here.
Mary Trump: Right. And I mean, part of the problem, of course, is establishment Democrats who seem to think that it’s still more important to be buddies with their Republican colleagues than to say, “No, draw the line. We will not work with you. You have made it clear that you don’t believe in the system, you exploit the system, you don’t care about your constituents, you don’t care about the Constitution, you’ve abdicated your constitutional responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera.”
So we need more people speaking truth to power because apparently this is a message that’s very hard to get out. But one thing we need more of is Katie Phang. Katie, the fact that you brought this lawsuit is incredible. I hope that it helps expose what’s going on at DOJ vis à vis Todd Blanche and his corrupt approach to this coverup. I hope it brings more attention to this issue that never should have been dropped out of the spotlight. And before I continue to sing your praises, please let everybody know where they can find you.
Katie Phang: Oh, that’s so sweet. Yeah, so I’m here on Substack. This is where you see me and Mary, and you can also find me on YouTube. My channel is called Katie Phang News. It’s a free subscription. I would love you all to subscribe and support the channel. It’s incredibly helpful, and you can see all of those episodes. All those episodes are also available as a podcast wherever you find your pods. So if you can’t watch it, you can listen to it.
It does get the E for explicit label, which makes me laugh because I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean, explicit language from Katie Phang?
Mary Trump: Katie Phang.
Katie Phang: I know, with a PH. That’s your full name. E. Jean Carroll gets to trademark that one. Katie Phang. But look, you know what, Mary? What I always say, and I think stands true, is we have our own little mini community of our friends, but we also have a community here at Substack. And what I like about Substack especially is it’s not an echo chamber. I get some legitimate, I think, credible constructive criticism about stuff, either about the work I’m doing or the reporting I’m doing or what’s going on.
I mean, that’s what we do as friends. We’re not here to just pat each other on the back and give each other platitudes. I mean, that’s how we work towards building something. And I can tell you, I’ve also kind of gotten to the point too where I actually had this happen with Andy Beshear the other day.
There is this, I don’t know, it’s not just with Andy, but there’s kind of this celebrity thing that some members of Congress and politicians have going on, which really drives me nuts. It’s like, I don’t really know where this kind of celebrity energy came from or this deified kind of energy came from. But I like Andy Beshear, and I kind of don’t like what he’s doing with this whole Mitch McConnell situation. And so I put him through his paces.
It’s funny because somebody asked me afterwards, they were joking, “Well, he’s probably never going to have a conversation with you again.” And I was like, “Oh, well. What do you want me to do about that?”
Mary Trump: Because we’re not doing anybody any favors by agreeing with them all the time. Now, obviously there are some people with whom I do agree almost all the time, like you, Joyce, et cetera, because, I mean, for obvious reasons, because we’re right about it. No, I’m just kidding.
But we aren’t doing anybody any favors if we think they’re misguided or they’re on the wrong track and we don’t push back. It allows them to continue getting away with things that are potentially harmful in the long run. And just like we’re seeing with establishment Democrats going after progressives and democratic socialists when we’ve got fascists running the country. Come on, guys. Be real.
Katie Phang: Yeah, that’s been bothering me too. I mean, we should have a whole conversation about this some other time because this whole idea of labeling people as democratic socialists and then trying to use it as a reason not to support them, I’m worried that we’re going to have a repeat in November 2024.
Mary Trump: Yeah. And if we do, it will be because establishment Democrats aren’t looking in the mirror. The fact that voters are electing progressives and democratic socialists, I don’t think it’s ideological. I think it’s because these people who are winning elections are demonstrating that they’re willing to fight and they do understand what civil service is.
And it’s an opportunity, I think, for Democrats who are in office, who maybe are a little too comfortable, to start looking at themselves and say, “Maybe there are things we should be doing differently, and maybe we should support these candidates because, well, one, because we have to win. And two, because voters elected them. Voters want them to be in these offices.”
Katie Phang: And that is the thing. It’s not the label, Mary. We should be paying attention to what are they offering voters that is resonating so well that the voters say, “We want that.” And what it does, though, is I think it really does shake the foundation of what D.C. is supposed to look like. D.C. is supposed to be a representative entity, or Congress is supposed to be a representative entity of the people. It’s been looking very one note as of late.
And so that’s why I feel like a lot of the people who are doing well as candidates come from different walks of life. And we don’t all agree because we haven’t had the same lived experience to get to where we are now. But your experience is remarkably different than mine, and I don’t understand why there’s not an opportunity for you and me to work together in a legislative body where you lean into your lived experience as I lean into mine, and then we collectively figure something out.
In my mind, isn’t that what Congress is supposed to be? I mean, isn’t that supposed to be truly a representative democracy? And so that’s why I feel like we should probably shed the labeling, especially because now we’re at this point where I think this is a no brainer. If you have a Republican who is not standing up for the people in any way, then I’m not sure why we have to have the infighting on the other side of the aisle. I think we elect the Democrat and then we figure it out.
And look, here’s the other thing. I think the one maybe refreshing thing is this has now become very apparent because I think people are really being honest about it and embracing it. This is not your lifetime job. You’re not going to park yourself there and retire there or Mitch McConnell there.
Because he’s now a verb, because I’m not quite sure, he’s in purgatory, not quite dead, not quite alive, this guy. So you’re not supposed to go to D.C. and Mitch McConnell there. You’re supposed to go to D.C., do your work, and move on. Let’s move on, people. They should only give you a parking space in D.C. that should have an expiration date like my milk or like my lettuce.
So let’s elect people who go and they do their job. And look, if they’re doing a good job, then obviously they continue to do a good job. But then I also think, thank you for your good work. Go do your good work somewhere else now. I don’t think you should hang out there any longer, even if you’re doing a great job. I think it’s time to move other people in.
And so, look, I have big ideas. Some of them are very lofty. Don’t come to me with the details because I haven’t really worked them out yet. But I do know I’m hardcore about November. So let’s make this happen, and let’s have these conversations in really good ways after we win in November.
Mary Trump: Yeah. And actually, I think we should have a conversation in the not too distant future because, as we get closer to the election, I think we need to shift towards talking not just about how bad things are and policy issues, which are important, but also about where we want to go, how we want to change things fundamentally, the kind of leaders we want, et cetera.
And I think we can do both instead of just getting mired in what’s going on on a day to day basis and getting kind of overwhelmed by the onslaught of horrors. Let’s start thinking constructively about what we want going forward. And as everybody watching should know by now, Katie Phang is one of those essential voices out there. Subscribe to her Substack, subscribe to her YouTube channel, listen to her podcast. I mean, seriously, subscriptions on YouTube really matter. It doesn’t cost anything, but it makes a huge difference to get those numbers up.
So let’s help Katie do that. And my Substack is The Good in Us. I also have a YouTube channel, also free to subscribe. And just really quickly, my wife Ronda and I just started a PAC about a month and a half ago. It’s amazing, Transcend PAC. And our goal is to elect the kind of leaders Katie and I have been talking about. So check that out as well. Just Google Mary Trump Transcend PAC and you’ll get there.
But Katie, keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll keep checking in. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody who’s joined us today. This is great, as always. Love you.
Katie Phang: Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye, Mary.
Mary Trump: The conversation continues in the comments, so let us know what you think.
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