A federal judge in New York cleared the way for the Justice Department to release long-sealed grand jury materials from its sex-trafficking investigation into the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, marking another major step in the government’s race to comply with a new transparency law that requires all Epstein-related files to be published by Dec. 19.
Judge Richard Berman granted the department’s request in a four-page order on Wednesday, concluding that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by President Donald Trump, overrides the decades-old secrecy rules that previously kept the records under seal. He stressed that any disclosures must be made “in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and with the unequivocal right of Epstein victims to have their identity and privacy protected,” adding that “victims’ safety and privacy are paramount.”
The ruling arrived just one day after U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer authorized a similar release of grand jury records in the Ghislaine Maxwell case. And the New York decisions follow a parallel ruling in Florida last week, where U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith authorized the DOJ to unseal grand jury materials from Epstein’s original federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida, which collapsed into the infamous 2008 nonprosecution agreement that allowed him to avoid trial and serve a lenient county-jail sentence.
Together, the three decisions set up the most sweeping account yet of how federal investigators pursued Epstein and Maxwell, encompassing not only grand jury transcripts but extensive investigative files that were turned over to defense teams years ago under protective orders and never made public.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, compelling the DOJ to disclose all unclassified records connected to Epstein and Maxwell, subject to redactions of names and identifying details of victims. The law effectively altered the legal landscape that had blocked earlier efforts to surface these materials.
Both Berman and Engelmayer rejected Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s earlier summertime bids to unseal grand jury evidence, finding that grand jury secrecy laws left them no room to grant her request. Bondi renewed her push last month, expanding her petition to include all documents shielded by protective orders and urging the courts to expedite action now that Congress had set a firm deadline. The filing, signed by Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, argued that the new statute made release mandatory.
JUDGE ALLOWS DOJ TO RELEASE GHISLAINE MAXELL GRAND JURY TRANSCRIPTS
Epstein was indicted in Manhattan in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving minors. He was found dead in his jail cell the following month, a death ruled a suicide. Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 after a monthlong trial in which prosecutors depicted her as Epstein’s primary enabler, grooming girls as young as age 14 for abuse. She is serving a 20-year sentence.
The DOJ now faces the technical challenge of preparing and redacting thousands of pages of material while meeting the statute’s deadline. However, Wednesday’s ruling eliminates one of the last procedural obstacles to publication.