The Trump administration is using an irregular legal tactic in an attempt to suppress court info, including regarding the president’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In multiple Freedom of Information Act suits, the administration is attempting to strike certain facts from the public record, a tactic typically aimed at delaying proceedings. One of these cases is aimed at revealing any interviews President Donald Trump may have done with law enforcement during the investigation into Epstein.
In recent months, Department of Justice lawyers have begun making “motions to strike” in some high-profile FOIA cases, including one concerned with the $400 million Qatari jet gifted to Trump, one regarding deportations to El Salvador, and two involving Epstein.
One of the Epstein-related cases concerns potential intervention by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel into the review of Epstein-related documents. The other is aimed at revealing any interviews with Trump law enforcement may have conducted in the 2005 to 2008 investigation into Epstein. Each FOIA case was brought by the nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight.
In the legal context, a motion to strike refers to a request to remove a piece of evidence from the court’s record — a move that is typically reserved only for when a piece of evidence is considered redundant, immaterial, impertinent or scandalous.
“The process of making that initial motion can generate some delay, which the government is going to want to do here.”
In the relevant cases, however, the DOJ’s motions to strike have targeted factual statements that have long been known to the public, like facts surrounding Trump’s well-established relationship with Epstein. Some have included statements from the president himself. In one case, the Justice Department sought to strike a now-infamous statement from Trump concerning his relationship with Epstein from 2002, among a variety of other factual statements documenting Trump’s history with Epstein. In another case, the DOJ is seeking to strike a statement made by the president on his own Truth Social account from the record.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. … He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” reads one quote that the DOJ is seeking to strike, first reported by New York Magazine.
In two of the cases, both concerning Epstein, the judges overseeing the case denied the government’s motion to strike information from the record. A decision is pending in the other two. The delay tactic, however, was successful. In one case, the motion to strike was made on Dec. 17 of last year and was only denied on Feb. 9.
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Richard Swanson, president of the New York County Lawyers Association, told Salon that “Motions to strike irrelevant, prejudicial or scandalous matters are almost never made, and when made, almost never granted. So that tells you the odds here.”
“The real remedy is for the government to ask for portions of the record that they really think are national security matters or other sensitive law enforcement matters to be sealed, and that a judge might look at seriously,” Swanson said. “The process of making that initial motion can generate some delay, which the government is going to want to do here.”
The delay tactic, Swanson said, is a way to avoid having to respond to the substance of the suits as well as a judge potentially ruling that the matters are eligible for release under FOIA. Given the time that both parties get to respond to the motion, the government will enjoy weeks of delay, if not months, from their motions to strike. The delay tactic could also be a way to cope with staffing shortages at the DOJ and to potentially avoid acknowledging inconvenient facts in court.
Chioma Chukwu, the executive director of American Oversight, told Salon that he sees the maneuver as a way to skirt transparency, saying that the motions to strike are “one of the most extreme tools in litigation, reserved for rare and extraordinary situations. In this context, they serve a clear purpose: to delay accountability, to obscure facts already before the public, and to shield those in power from scrutiny.”
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“The Trump administration’s conduct reveals a deeply alarming pattern: whenever lawsuits seek transparency on matters of immense public importance that touch the president directly — whether the government’s handling of the Epstein files or the murky circumstances surrounding a $400 million jet gifted by a foreign power — its lawyers urge courts to act as censors, striking facts, including the president’s own words, from the public record, as though the truth itself were a threat,” Chukwu said.
In terms of next steps in the cases where the motions to strike have been resolved, the timeline for the potential release of documents remains murky. In the case concerning the handling of files related to Epstein by Bondi and Patel, the court is expected to set a timeline for further proceedings in late March.
In the case concerning potential interviews with Trump regarding Epstein, the government has issued a Glomar response, meaning they are refusing to either confirm or deny the existence of any interviews between Trump and law enforcement. Within a few weeks, it should become clear whether or not the government intends to stand by that response.
The DOJ declined to comment to Salon for this article.
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