Katie Phang: Suing the DOJ, the Epstein Files, and the Shift to Independent Journalism

This actually is very relevant to some work that I've been doing that has been incredibly powerful and I think one of the coolest things about this marriage of being in the media and being a trial lawyer and having a background in the law.

I've been doing a lot of work involving the Epstein files.

And I've been doing a lot of work with the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Glenn Maxwell, and others.

And it's become a huge part of the work I do because if there's anything that we do, and especially you guys as plaintiff's attorneys, transparency and accountability.

That's what you guys are all about.

And that's what justice is really all about, right? Whatever the outcome is, as long as justice happens.

And in this instance, these victims and survivors really haven't seen justice and accountability because despite a multi-decade international sex trafficking ring, only two people were ever arrested.

and one of them is dead.

And the other one is now gunning for a pardon from the President of the United States.

But the reason why I bring this up is the following.

I just recently covered the preview before it became public of this place called the Trump-Epstein Reading Room.

And what this group of people did is they took the Epstein files as currently produced by the Trump DOJ, and it's three and a half million documents, and they bound them into 3,437 volumes.

And it's more than 17,000 pounds of evidence, right? I want you to think about that.

And it took two stories, two stories of a building in Tribeca to be able to put it all out on these bookcases, kind of like the ones that we're in right now, floor to ceiling.

And I spoke to the guy, it was like the brainchild of this guy, David Garrett.

I'm like, why, why do this? I mean, obviously the magnitude of you walk in and you see the volumes and the rows and rows of the Epstein files is so powerful, but why do it this way? And he said the following, he has two daughters.

He said, because our technology in our lives right now are governed through a screen, meaning You're gonna look at a cat video, and then you're gonna look at a video about Epstein, and then you're gonna look at a political video, and then you're gonna look at a video about fixing a car.

At some point in time, it all kind of blurs together.

At some point in time, I think your brain kind of starts to get numb to be able to distinguish and to kind of discern what really has impact and what's important that you're looking at.

So he felt like it made a lot of sense to take those files and instead of just maybe seeing it on a screen or somebody talking about it, to give it to you in a physical form so you could really literally hold it and deal with it.

And it makes me think about what you just asked, which is, you know, when we're growing up, we didn't have all of that.

And so the way that we experienced life was a lot more visceral.

It was a lot more in it and you had to be intentional with the way that, you know, you're now dealing with it versus before where, you know, you just felt it more.

So I thought that was really kind of interesting that he actually made that distinction.

And it's been an incredibly powerful moment because a lot of people have gone to go look at the files that way.