A lawyer suing the Department of Justice over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files has described the "crazy two hours" in court that could ultimately spill "millions" of pages of documents.

Speaking on the podcast "Legal AF," Public Integrity Project attorney Brendan Ballou recounted how the Justice Department's lawyer attempted to defend the redactions of the Epstein files against a lawsuit brought by attorney and journalist Katie Phang.

"It was a shocking sort of experience for me, having been at the Department of Justice, to see the argument that they were making," Ballou said. "They didn't seem to have a plan for the hearing or for what the judge's questions were going to be, sort of basic questions about the case."

Phang is suing Attorney General Todd Blanche over the redactions, which she argues were illegal and violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law in July 2025 to direct the department to publicly release documents tied to Epstein and his co-conspirators. Pressure for full disclosure has persisted since Epstein died in federal custody in August 2019 while awaiting federal sex-trafficking charges; his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit and groom underage girls for his abuse.

The DOJ sent a single attorney, Andrew Block, to argue the show-cause hearing — a proceeding in which a party must explain why it should not be sanctioned — alone. Ballou, who was in the courtroom, called it "a pretty crazy two hours" — a "close-shoelace" disaster marked by "long periods of silence," no plan, and no attempt to argue that the department was actually complying.

"At no point did they argue that they were complying with the law, which I thought was pretty shocking," Ballou said. "You would think you would want to at least nominally say, 'Look, judge, we are actually following the law here.'"

Instead, according to Ballou, the DOJ's posture amounted to variations on "we've reinterpreted the orders so we don't have to follow them."

Judge Emmet Sullivan, a senior U.S. district judge in Washington, suggested he could hold Block in contempt, delivering what Ballou described as a "half-hour long description of having previously found the Department in contempt." Formal contempt findings against federal government attorneys are rare, and any ruling on that front would mark a sharp escalation in the standoff over the files.

"He's basically bringing up the specter of contempt, saying, 'It's a promise, not a threat,'" Ballou said. "I think he really made clear the profound professional consequences that follow you if you are, in fact, held in contempt."

Sullivan also asked only Phang's side to draft a proposed order releasing Epstein files — a detail Ballou found telling. That draft order, and the department's response to it, is the case's immediate next step. He framed the current fight as a "small subset" of a larger battle over millions of pages that he says cannot be trusted as having been reviewed and redacted honestly or completely.

"Ultimately, we're talking about millions of documents that need to be properly reviewed that we really can't trust the Department of Justice did a good job on," Ballou said. "Every time the Department of Justice evades, fails to comply, fails to be completely transparent, it's going to make it a lot easier for us to get that ultimate remedy. Absolutely."

The comments were made on the "Legal AF" podcast (episode). Original reporting: Raw Story.