The Department of Justice has struck out with all its requests to federal judges to unseal grand jury transcripts and other materials related to Jeffrey Epstein.
A judge in New York on Wednesday denied the government’s request to unseal the documents, noting that the content of grand jury transcripts in the sex offender’s trafficking case “pales in comparison to the Epstein investigative information and materials” already in the hands of the Justice Department.
District Judge Richard Berman, who presided over Epstein’s case before he died in his jail cell in 2019, agreed with another judge who last week had called the government’s request a “diversion” tactic to distract from public pressure against Donald Trump’s administration to release the so-called Epstein files.
“The government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein file,” Berman wrote on Wednesday.
“By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a ‘diversion’ from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession,” he added. “The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct.”
Wednesday’s ruling follows a judge’s rejection of the Justice Department’s request for grand jury documents in the case against Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her conviction on sex trafficking charges tied to Epstein’s crimes.
In his 31-page opinion on August 11, District Judge Paul Engelmayer said nothing new would be revealed from the documents, and the public would instead “come away feeling disappointed and misled.”
Last month, Florida District Judge Robin Rosenberg said her “hands are tied” when it comes to laws governing the release of grand jury transcripts, noting that the government’s request falls outside the bounds of narrow exceptions.
“The government’s request is not to assist with litigation in the New York federal proceedings,” she wrote. “The government wants the petition to be granted so that it can release evidence to the public at large.”
In the case in Berman’s court, the only witness to testify to the grand jury was an FBI agent who, according to the judge, “had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case and whose testimony was mostly hearsay.”
That agent testified over two days in 2019, and the entire transcript was 70 pages, according to the Justice Department.
The rest of the grand jury presentation consisted of a PowerPoint and a call log.
Trump, whose friendship with Epstein spanned more than a decade, has insisted that the public and press should move on from questions about the case. Epstein’s death during Trump’s first administration has fueled ongoing conspiracy theories of a government-wide cover up to protect powerful public figures who exploited and abused young girls.
The Justice Department’s failure to convince federal courts to release those materials is likely to add to mounting pressure, with members of Congress expected to receive additional information surrounding Epstein’s case in the coming days.
The Independent has requested comment from the Justice Department.
In February, the White House handed over binders of largely publicly-available Epstein-related documents to several far-right influencers in an apparent effort to prove that the administration was listening to demands for more information about the case.
At the time, Bondi labeled the release of those documents a “first phase” and told Fox News that more materials were “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
In July, the Trump administration reversed course, finding “no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials” despite demands for a full accounting of Epstein’s death and alleged ties to a wider child trafficking conspiracy implicating powerful figures.
Officials determined that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
Trump’s former criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche — who is now Bondi’s top deputy at the Justice Department — performed a two-day jailhouse interview with Maxwell in Florida before federal authorities moved her to a lower-security prison in Texas.
Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein in 2021. She is serving a 20-year sentence for what prosecutors labeled a years-long scheme to recruit, groom and abuse young girls.
In a letter to members of Congress, her attorneys asked for some immunity protections — and made another appeal to Trump for clemency — in exchange for her testimony.
