On Monday, a federal court in Manhattan denied the Trump administration’s request to make grand jury transcripts from the Justice Department’s investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidante of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, public.
Last month, the department requested that the court release the normally confidential grand jury transcripts, citing “abundant public interest” in the case. The administration’s attempt to quell the intense public outcry over its handling of the Epstein files included the unprecedented request.
However, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled on Monday that there were no exceptional circumstances that warranted the transcripts in Maxwell’s case being made public.
“Its entire premise that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them is demonstrably false,” Engelmayer stated.
According to him, the documents don’t reveal anything new regarding Epstein’s or Maxwell’s clientele, the location, the new sources of their wealth, or the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s passing.
The judge went on to say, “There is no ‘there’ there,”
While awaiting trial on sex-trafficking accusations, Epstein passed away in a federal prison in 2019. Conspiracy theories concerning Epstein’s mistreatment of minors and the activities of his colleagues have been stoked by his death, which officials have stated was a suicide on multiple occasions.
For years, FBI Director Kash Patel and other senior members of President Trump’s administration contributed to the spread of those conspiracy theories.
The Justice Department and FBI issued a statement in July that disproved several of those hypotheses and stated that no more materials from the Epstein investigations would be made public, igniting public fury, especially from Trump’s MAGA constituency, despite their promises of transparency in the Epstein case.
The president, who knew Epstein, requested Attorney General Pam Bondi to request the release of grand jury transcripts from the department’s investigations into Epstein and Maxwell in an attempt to limit the impact.
In response, the department requested that the grand jury transcripts from the investigations into Epstein and his longstanding friend Ghislaine Maxwell be unsealed by three federal judges, two of whom were located in Manhattan and one in Florida. The request was denied by Florida judge Robin Rosenberg, who stated that the 11th Circuit law prohibits the sharing of such documents.
Judge Engelmayer of Manhattan is a member of the 2nd Circuit, which has precedence permitting the public release of grand jury records in specific exceptional situations. According to the judge, that high bar was not reached in this case.
There was no anticipation that anything noteworthy would have come from the transcripts, even if they had been made public.
In court filings, the DOJ has previously stated that just one FBI agent testified before the grand jury in the Epstein case. The department claims that the only two witnesses in Maxwell’s case were the same FBI agent and a detective from the New York Police Department.
Maxwell is presently incarcerated for 20 years on charges of aiding and abetting Epstein’s mistreatment of girls.
Maxwell was questioned about Epstein in a private interview conducted late last month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former Trump personal lawyer.
No information regarding the meeting, participants, or Maxwell’s remarks has been made public by the Justice Department.
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