"It's not as if we're keeping records from the American people. Some of these records are highly classified for reasons that are appropriate. Sometimes there's documents that are classified and they shouldn't be, and so those are the ones that we're going to release. The one thing that we are not doing, we're not protecting people. The reason that we're not releasing documents has nothing to do with protecting any government or any entity. It's just to protect genuine classified information."
On Friday, September 11, 2026, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, Terry Strada — widow of Tom Strada and chair of 9/11 Families United — read victims' names at ground zero and then said the words above from the stage, to applause, with every living former president and Vice President Vance seated in front of her. She asked Trump to "tell the Saudis to stop lying" and said "President Trump can still change that." The nephew of victim Lisa Marie Terry told the same crowd: "President Trump, you're our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia while what's left of the victims' families are still alive to see it." Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals; the kingdom has always denied involvement and is contesting the families' suit. In August 2026 U.S. District Judge George Daniels held that the families had presented enough evidence for the case to move toward trial, without finding Saudi Arabia responsible. Their attorneys have described repeated obstacles in obtaining materials from U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies; asked for the records, the reviewing board wrote weeks later that it was "actively engaged in interagency consultations to determine what equities, if any, may remain." On Sunday, September 13, at Doonbeg, just before boarding Air Force One to return from Ireland, Trump was asked about the request: "I'm going to look at it when I get back. I know they asked me Friday." On Monday, September 14, in Kansas City — where he appeared with Vice President Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel to announce a nationwide pandemic-relief fraud operation — Blanche gave CBS News an interview and said the words above, under questioning from correspondent Nicole Sganga, who asked directly whether the Justice Department objects to the release of any remaining 9/11 records concerning possible Saudi links. He said records would continue to be released, that the administration is the most transparent in modern history, that DOJ holds some and other agencies hold others, that the CIA had released a set of documents and DHS was looking to release some, and that "there'll be more records coming out." He gave no timeline and did not answer whether the department objects to releasing the Saudi-related material. The CIA's release consisted of 71 pre- and post-attack presidential briefings, which are not the records the families are seeking. Three days earlier, as recorded in entry #49, the same department unsealed a removal order signed on August 20 and held under seal for twenty-two days, choosing September 11 as the date to make it public and announcing it as "a win for national security and the rule of law."
Filed it as a vow. CBS ran "Blanche vows to release more 9/11 documents"; Mediaite ran the same answer as a man insisting under pointed questioning. Both are fair, and both stop where the sentence stops. Nobody set September 11 beside September 14. One seal opened on the anniversary because opening it produced an announcement; the other has no date, and both are controlled by the same officer. Nobody noticed that the answer is a claim about motive rather than about content — he said the withholding is not to protect any government, only to protect genuine classified information, and the families have not asked him why, they have asked him when. The follow-up nobody asked is the one his own answer sets up: if a document is classified and, in his words, "shouldn't be," what is the process and the deadline for moving it from that pile to the other one. And nobody put the weekend next to 2022, when Trump, defending a Saudi-funded LIV Golf tournament at his New Jersey club against protests from these same families, said "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11." Four years later the answer to the families, given at another of his golf resorts, was "I'm going to look at it when I get back."
Entry #49 established what this officer's discretion looks like when it works in his favor: the statute names the Attorney General personally as the certifying officer for the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, his department controlled the seal on the resulting order, and the date it chose to lift that seal was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, after the subject was already out of the country. This is the same discretion pointed the other way, in the same week, on the same subject matter. Nothing here is unlawful. Classification review is real, interagency equities are real, and no one has shown that a specific document is being held to shield a foreign government — which is precisely why this is filed as documented rather than alleged. The only things the record establishes are who decides, that one officer decides both, that one decision arrived with a press release and the other arrived with no date, and that the families' civil case is now moving toward trial on a federal judge's finding, which means the documents have a second audience operating on a calendar. The department has an interest in that calendar and no obligation to explain itself. Twenty-five years is the number in every headline. The number that matters is twenty-two: the days the department held one order under seal until the anniversary made it useful.