caption...Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Note from the author: The full ten page complaint can be found by clicking on this sentence. The first page is available as a regular image if you want to scroll to the bottom to read it and then back up to the top and read the article.

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files has again drawn a New York misconduct complaint that could cost him his law license. Yesterday, I submitted an additional filing reporting his missed court deadlines that were still live as of Sept. 24. This addition builds on an earlier complaint that already presented evidence of Blanche defying federal court orders in the same case.

I also filed that earlier package, which cites Judge Emmet Sullivan’s orders and findings in Phang v. Blanche. Among the misconduct it lists:

On June 25, Sullivan ordered the government to produce underlying FBI interview notes for certain Epstein-related reports, or show cause why not, after granting a preliminary injunction to enforce the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
On Aug. 6, Sullivan’s order found that Blanche’s explanations for victim-name redactions “do not comply with the Court’s Order, which requires documentation to support the assertions,” and that the handwritten FBI notes still had not been produced as ordered.
At an August status hearing, Sullivan warned he could hold Justice Department lawyers in contempt if the stonewalling continued.
Blanche later appealed and, in court filings covered in the original complaint, kept objecting to producing documents without first winning a stay of the live orders. Under long-settled Supreme Court law, a party who thinks an order is wrong may appeal, but absent a stay must comply while the appeal is pending.

New York’s Rule 3.4(c) says a lawyer shall not disregard a tribunal’s ruling. My September complaint to the Attorney Grievance Committee for the First Department builds on that rule. The committee investigates lawyers and can seek discipline up to suspension or disbarment. The state’s courts decide whether to pull a license. There is no exemption for the U.S. attorney general. Blanche still holds New York registration №4192456, so the committee can pursue him like any other lawyer on the roll.

My filing is not the only New York grievance on the committee’s desk. In September 2025, the Legal Accountability Center complained about Blanche’s personal interview of Ghislaine Maxwell while he was deputy attorney general. In June 2026, Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and more than 100 former judges filed a broader ethics complaint that cites that Maxwell interview, Blanche’s role in the Epstein files release, and other alleged conflicts. The committee’s chief attorney later deferred that judges’ package to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

My supplement, filed Sept. 24, stays on a narrower track. It updates my complaint and asks the regulators to review the public docket after new deadlines Sullivan set for that day. A copy also went to the federal grievance committee in Manhattan. It does not demand a specific punishment.

Those deadlines are in Phang v. Blanche, in Washington, D.C. On Sept. 16, Sullivan ordered Blanche to file an Answer by Sept. 24. In a second order the same day, he set an 11 a.m. Eastern deadline on Sept. 24 for specific Epstein-related materials to go to chambers for private review, including documentation for victim-name redactions and the underlying FBI interview notes. A separate piece covered foreign-language files.

Blanche appealed the second order and asked to pause only the foreign-language deadline. On Sept. 21, Sullivan refused a broad pause. He temporarily held only the foreign-language piece so Blanche could go to the appeals court. He did not pause the Answer deadline. He did not pause the 11 a.m. chambers deadline either. The D.C. Circuit has set briefing on a stay. As of Sept. 24, it had not frozen those two live deadlines.

After 11 a.m. on Sept. 24, the public docket still ended on Sept. 21. There was no Answer. There was no public notice that the chambers materials were submitted. Missing notice on the foreign-language piece is different, because that deadline was paused. My filing notes that a sealed lodging could exist with no public line. It also notes that when Blanche previously complied with a similar order in this case, he filed a public Notice of Compliance. No public Notice of Compliance appeared on the docket.

For an ordinary New York lawyer, knowingly ignoring a live court order puts a license in real danger, including long suspension or disbarment in serious cases. Federal lawyers do not get a free pass. Blanche’s job cuts against leniency: the attorney general holds more public trust than a private lawyer and is supposed to set a higher example, not a lower one.

A complaint is not a conviction, and filing one does not take a license by itself. What the Grievance Committee now has is the original record of disregarded orders plus my Sept. 24 update: deadlines that were still live, and a public docket that still did not show the Answer or the chambers filings those deadlines required. For a sitting attorney general who remains a New York lawyer, that is a license problem.

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