New Delhi, Aug. 1 -- At 2:28 p.m. on July 30, a Justice Department courier arrived at the chambers of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan carrying ten documents Todd Blanche had spent months refusing to hand over. The delivery, made minutes before Sullivan's court-ordered deadline, ended a contempt standoff that had grown from a lawsuit over the release of Jeffrey Epstein's files into a direct test of whether the Justice Department answers to federal courts at all.

a process that gives him sole authority to determine whether DOJ's redactions protect genuine victim privacy or instead conceal the identities of Epstein's associates and co-conspirators. His findings will determine whether the redactions stand, whether the department must rele...