NEW YORK (AP) — Transcripts of the secret grand jury testimony that led to the sex trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell shouldn’t be released, a judge ruled Monday in a stinging decision suggesting the Justice Department's real motive for wanting them unsealed was to fool the public with an “illusion” of transparency.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in a written decision that federal law almost never allows for the release of grand jury materials and that making the documents public casually was a bad idea.
And the judge also belittled the Justice Department's argument that releasing grand jury materials might reveal new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, calling that premise "demonstrably false.”
After privately reviewing the materials the government sought to release publicly, the judge wrote that anyone familiar the evidence from Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial 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,” Engelmayer said.
He said the materials also don't reveal new locations where crimes occurred, new sources of Maxwell and Epstein's wealth, the circumstances of Epstein's death or the path of the government investigation.
The best argument to release the transcripts might be that “doing so would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal,” Engelmayer wrote.
“A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” he said.
The Justice Department had requested public disclosure of the entire proceedings before the Maxwell grand jury, minus redactions to protect privacy.
Florida lawyer Brad Edwards, who has represented nearly two dozen Epstein accusers, said he didn’t disagree with the ruling and most wanted to protect victims. “The grand jury materials contain very little in the way of evidentiary value anyway,” he said.
Maxwell lawyer Bobbi Sternheim declined comment. Messages for comment were left with the Justice Department.
Federal prosecutors had asked to unseal the documents to calm a whirlpool of suspicions about what the government knows about Epstein, a well-connected financier who authorities said killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving dozens of women and girls as young as 14. Maxwell, a socialite, was later convicted of helping him prey on underage girls.
The Justice Department has acknowledged that only an FBI agent and a New York Police Department detective testified before the grand jury in 2020 and 2021.
Prosecutors have said much of what was discussed behind the grand jury’s closed doors ultimately became public at Maxwell’s 2021 trial, in victims’ civil lawsuits or in public statements from victims and witnesses.
The decision about the grand jury transcripts doesn’t affect thousands of other pages the government possesses but has declined to release. The Justice Department has said much of the material was court-sealed to protect victims and little of it would've come out if Epstein had gone to trial.
Another federal judge is weighing whether to release grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case.
A federal judge in Florida declined to release grand jury documents from an investigation there in 2005 and 2007.
Maxwell, who’s appealing her conviction, opposed unsealing the documents. She recently was interviewed by the Justice Department and was moved from a prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas. Her attorney says she testified truthfully.
The Epstein saga has again become a national flashpoint years after Epstein served jail time and registered as a sex offender after pleading guilty to Florida prostitution offenses in a 2008 deal that let him avoid federal charges then.
President Donald Trump raised questions about Epstein’s death, and Trump allies stoked conspiracy theories that dark secrets were covered up to protect powerful people. Some of those allies got powerful positions in Trump’s Justice Department and promised to pull back the curtain on the Epstein investigation — but then announced this summer nothing more would be released and a long-rumored Epstein “client list” doesn’t exist.
The about-face amplified the clamor for transparency. After trying unsuccessfully to change the subject and denigrating his own supporters for not moving on, Trump told Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask courts to unseal the grand jury transcripts.
