Attorney General Todd Blanche promised to release more government records related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, disputing allegations from victims’ families that the documents are being withheld to protect Saudi Arabia.
The pushback came just days after the 25th anniversary 9/11 remembrance ceremony at ground zero, where victims’ families urged President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance to press Saudi Arabia over its alleged role in the attacks.
“The one thing that we are not doing, we’re not protecting people,” Mr. Blanche said on CBS News. “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.”
He said documents labeled classified but shouldn’t be will be made public.
“There’ll be more records coming out,” Mr. Blanche said. “The families that are still looking for answers, we are too. And that’s what we are going to deliver to them.
Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom Strada, was killed on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower while working for Cantor Fitzgerald, was reading the names of the 9/11 victims Friday when she veered into comments about Saudi Arabia.
“How can it be 25 years and we still have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” she said. “Yes, we finally made it into a court and have proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones.”
Ms. Strada accused former presidents of withholding evidence and breaking promises.
“It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying,” she said.
Others blamed the “Deep State” for hiding the truth about the Saudis’ involvement.
Attorneys for Saudi Arabia denied the merits of the victims’ lawsuit alleging the kingdom’s involvement in 9/11. The lawyers also said in legal filings that the kingdom helped the U.S. combat al Qaeda, its late founder Osama bin Laden and terrorism in general.
In August 2025, a New York federal judge rejected Saudi Arabia’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled that an imam and accountants employed by Saudi Arabia probably had links to two al Qaeda members who came to the U.S. in early 2000. That connection was enough, he said, to allow the 9/11 victims’ families’ claim to proceed to trial. However, a trial has not taken place.
ABC News this month revealed government records of an alleged video of a Saudi agent casing the U.S. Capitol and a sketch with calculations for flying a plane toward a ground target. Investigators believed the Capitol was the target of the airliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11.
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