A demonstrator in Washington holds a sign demanding the release of the Epstein files in September. The U.S. Justice Department is again seeking to have the grand jury files in the Epstein case unsealed. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The U.S. Justice Department renewed its request Monday to unseal grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases, arguing they should be made public under a new law requiring the government to open its files on the late financier and his longtime confidante.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton cited the Epstein Files Transparency Act — passed by Congress last week and signed into law by President Donald Trump — in court filings asking Manhattan federal judges Richard Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer to reconsider their prior decisions to keep the material sealed.
The Justice Department interprets the transparency act “as requiring it to publish the grand jury and discovery materials in this case,” said the eight-page filings, which also bear the names of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her second-in-command, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The filings are among the first public indications that the Justice Department is working to comply with the transparency act, which requires that it make Epstein-related files public in a searchable and downloadable format within 30 days of Trump signing it into law. That means no later than Dec. 19.
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Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to three prominent Democrats. The text of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, overwhelmingly passed Tuesday by the U.S. House and Senate, allows the Department of Justice to withhold or redact any records that ‘would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.’
The Justice Department asked Berman and Engelmayer for expedited rulings allowing the release of the grand jury materials, which contains testimony from law enforcement witnesses but no victims, arguing that the new law supersedes existing court orders and judicial policies that “would otherwise prevent public disclosure.”
In its filing Monday, the Justice Department said any materials made public could be partially redacted to prevent the disclosure of things like victims’ personal identifying information.
In an order late Monday, Engelmayer invited Maxwell and victims of Maxwell and Epstein to respond by Dec. 3 to the government’s request. The government must respond to their filings by Dec. 10. The judge said he will rule “promptly thereafter.”
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The transparency act compels the Justice Department, the FBI and federal prosecutors to release the vast troves of material they’ve amassed during investigations into Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse of young women and girls. The law mandates the release of all unclassified documents and investigative materials, including files relating to immunity deals and internal Justice Department communications about whom to charge or investigate.
Berman, who presided over Epstein’s 2019 case, ruled in August that a “significant and compelling reason” to deny the request and keep the transcripts sealed was that information contained in the transcripts “pales in comparison” to investigative information and materials already in the Justice Department’s possession.
Berman wrote that the government’s 100,000 pages of Epstein files and materials “dwarf the 70-odd pages of Epstein grand jury materials,” and that the grand jury testimony “is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct.”
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Two other judges have also denied the public release of material from investigations into Epstein.
The Justice Department has said that the only witness to testify before the Epstein grand jury was an FBI agent who, the judge noted, “had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case and whose testimony was mostly hearsay.”
The agent testified on June 18, 2019, and July 2, 2019. The rest of the grand jury presentation consisted of a PowerPoint slideshow and a call log. The July 2 session ended with grand jurors voting to indict Epstein.
Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019. He was found dead in his cell at a Manhattan federal jail on Aug. 10, 2019, in what authorities have ruled a suicide.
‘Illusion’ of transparency
The Justice Department first asked Berman to unseal the grand jury material in July, doing so at Trump’s direction as the president sought to quell a firestorm after he reneged on a campaign promise to open up the government’s so-called Epstein files.
Engelmayer, who presided over Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking trial, ruled first.
In an Aug. 11 decision, he wrote that federal law almost never allows for the release of grand jury materials and that casually making the documents public was a bad idea. And he suggested that the Trump administration’s real motive for wanting the records unsealed was to fool the public with an “illusion” of transparency.
Engelmayer wrote that after privately reviewing the grand jury transcripts that anyone familiar with the evidence would “learn next to nothing new” and “would come away feeling disappointed and misled.”
“The materials do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor. They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s. They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes,” the judge said.
