NEW YORKIn a scathing ruling on Monday, a judge said that the government’s teasing of further revelations was manifestly untrue and ordered the publication of transcripts of the secret grand jury testimony that resulted in the sex trafficking prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a written ruling, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer stated that the government had suggested making grand jury information publicly available in a casual or promiscuous manner, endangering the custom of grand jury secrecy, which safeguards the trust of persons called to testify before subsequent grand juries.
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According to him, it is clearly untrue for the Justice Department to say that the grand jury materials will reveal important new details on Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes or the Government’s investigation into them.
“Anyone familiar with the Maxwell trial record who looked at them would learn next to nothing new and would come away feeling disappointed and misled,” the judge concluded after examining the documents the government sought to make public.
Epstein and Maxwell are the only people named in the materials as having had sex with a juvenile. They don’t mention or name any of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s clients. According to Engelmayer, they don’t disclose any previously unidentified means or techniques of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes.
According to him, the documents also don’t disclose the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death, the government investigation’s course, new crime scenes, or the origins of Maxwell and Epstein’s fortune.
According to Engelmayer, the strongest justification for making the transcripts public might be that doing so would reveal the government’s official justifications for the decision to unseal as being deceptive.
Given that the Maxwell grand jury materials don’t add anything to the public’s knowledge, a member of the public might conclude that the government’s motion to unseal them was intended to divert attention rather than to provide complete disclosure, he said.
In order to preserve privacy, the Justice Department had asked that the whole proceedings before the Maxwell grand jury be made public, with certain redactions removed.
Brad Edwards, a Florida attorney who has defended almost two dozen Epstein accusations, stated that he did not object to the decision and that the majority of them wished to protect the victims. According to him, there isn’t much evidentiary value in the grand jury papers anyhow.
Bobbi Sternheim, Maxwell’s attorney, declined to comment. The Justice Department was contacted for comment.
In order to quell a flurry of suspicions regarding what the government knows about Epstein, a well-connected financier who authorities claim committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking allegations involving scores of women and girls as young as 14, federal prosecutors had asked to unseal the materials. Later, Maxwell, a socialite, was found guilty of assisting him in his predation of young girls.
Only a detective from the New York Police Department and an FBI agent testified before the grand jury in 2020 and 2021, according to the Justice Department.
According to the prosecution, a lot of the material that was reviewed behind closed doors by the grand jury was made public during Maxwell’s trial in 2021, in civil lawsuits filed by victims, or in public declarations made by witnesses and victims.
The grand jury transcript decision has no bearing on the thousands of other pages that the government has but has chosen not to make public. According to the Justice Department, if Epstein had gone to trial, not much of the evidence would have surfaced because most of it was court-sealed to protect the victims.
The Epstein case’s grand jury transcripts are being considered by another federal court.
In 2005 and 2007, a federal judge in Florida refused to make grand jury papers from an investigation there public.
Maxwell, who is contesting her conviction, was against the materials being unsealed. She was recently transferred from a Florida prison to a Texas prison camp and interviewed by the Justice Department. According to her lawyer, she gave an honest statement.
Years after Epstein did time in prison and registered as a sex offender after entering a guilty plea to Florida prostitution offenses in 2008, which allowed him to avoid federal charges at the time, the Epstein story has once again become a national hot topic.
Trump supporters fueled conspiracy theories that dark secrets were concealed to shield powerful individuals, while President Donald Trum encouraged inquiries into Epstein’s death. Some of those associates were given high-level posts in Trump’s Justice Department and made promises to end the Epstein probe. However, this summer, they declared that no further information will be made public and that there is no list of alleged clients for Epstein.
The demand for transparency was heightened by the about-face. Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to urge courts to unseal the grand jury transcripts after attempting in vain to shift the topic and criticizing his own supporters for failing to move on.
