Justice Department renews bid to unseal Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury materials

NEW YORK (AP) – The Justice Department on Monday renewed its request 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 M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer to reconsider their 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 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 release Epstein-related files in a searchable and downloadable format by Dec. 19.

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’ 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.”

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 has previously said that the grand jury transcripts in Epstein’s case amount to about 70 pages, along with a PowerPoint slideshow and call log. The only witness to testify was an FBI agent who “had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case,” Berman noted in his prior ruling.

The FBI agent testified on June 18, 2019, and July 2, 2019. The July 2 session ended with grand jurors voting to indict Epstein. He was arrested on July 6, 2019 and found dead in his jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019.

The same FBI agent testified before the Maxwell grand jury, which met in June and July 2020 and March 2021, the Justice Department has said. The only other witness was a New York City police detective.

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.

Berman, who presided over Epstein’s 2019 case, ruled about a week later. He concluded that a “significant and compelling reason” to deny the Justice Department’s request to unseal the Epstein grand jury transcripts was that information contained in them “pales in comparison” to investigative information and materials already in the Justice Department’s possession.

Berman wrote in his Aug. 20 ruling that the government’s 100,000 pages of Epstein-related files “dwarf” the grand jury transcripts, which he said were “merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct.”