Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case records to be unsealed as judge approves final DOJ request over secret transcripts
Secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case can be made public, a judge ruled Wednesday.
He joined two other judges in granting the Justice Department’s requests to unseal material from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse.
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
The judge previously cautioned that the 70 or so pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory.
On Tuesday, a different Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case.
Victims of Maxwell and Epstein had urged the court to unseal the files but wanted assurance that their identities and privacy wouldn’t be compromised.
In his order on Tuesday, New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer said their concerns “regrettably have a basis in fact,” after the Department of Justice failed to give notice to victims about the government’s motions to unseal the documents earlier this year.
“DOJ, although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims, has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” the judge wrote.
Victims’ letters to the court “widely expressed distress at the lack of notice given to them by DOJ … and alarm that the grand jury records DOJ would release, if authorized to do so, would invade their privacy,” Engelmayer added.
Last week, a judge in Florida approved the unsealing of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.
The Justice Department asked the judges to lift secrecy orders after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last month, created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential.
