Transcripts of grand jury testimony that led to sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell shouldn’t be released, a judge ruled Monday in a stinging decision suggesting the Trump administration’s real motive for wanting them unsealed was to fool the public with an “illusion” of transparency.
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in a written decision that federal law seldom allows the release of grand jury materials and that making the documents public casually was a bad idea.
The judge also belittled the Department of Justice’s argument that releasing grand jury materials might reveal new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, calling that premise “demonstrably false.”
The decision was a blow to President Donald Trump, who had called for the release of transcripts as he seeks to dispel rumors and quell criticism about his long ago involvement with Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019.
Trump campaigned on a promise to release files related to Epstein, but was met with criticism — including from many of his own supporters — when the small number of records released by his Justice Department lacked any real bombshells.
In his ruling, Engelmayer wrote that after privately reviewing the grand jury transcripts, anyone familiar with 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.
Hellbound and Down 