When the Trump Justice Department moved to unseal grand jury transcripts in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, it seemed the transcripts wouldn’t reveal much. Those documents likely offer nothing approaching the full scope of information contained in all of the government’s files related to the sex trafficking conspiracy that has embroiled President Donald Trump’s second term as his administration refuses to release all the information it possesses as promised.
The DOJ’s latest court filing in the matter reinforces the limited nature of what these transcripts would reveal if the government is successful in its pending motion to unseal.
While noting that certain information in the transcripts is not publicly available (as far as the government knows), the filing said that “much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony — with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses — was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses.”
If the DOJ is correct about the limited nature of the revelations it’s seeking, then it’s unclear why it’s seeking them. This endeavor could hardly be called a distraction. Rather, it keeps attention on a story the president doesn’t want to talk about, in a stated attempt to release information that is unlikely to make the story go away, because it won’t address all the other information the administration is keeping under wraps. Releasing the limited information in the grand jury transcripts would only re-raise the questions: What else is there, and why is the administration hiding it?
Crucially, not only is it an effort that could bear little, if any, valuable information, but it also comes at a potentially great cost to victims. They don’t seem to have been prioritized in an effort that’s apparently driven by protecting the president, whose resistance to full transparency has put greater focus on his own relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while being held on trafficking charges. It took pointed questioning from the judiciary for the DOJ to effectively concede that it hadn’t even notified victims of its unsealing attempt until prompted by the courts to do so.
Taking a step back, the unsealing litigation continues as the government just moved Maxwell to a minimum-security facility, after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer. It’s unclear what they discussed or why officials then moved her to a seemingly more comfortable living situation while she serves a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Otherwise set for release in 2037, she has a pending Supreme Court appeal, and her lawyers have said she would testify to Congress if Trump grants her clemency. Like the unsealing effort, it’s unclear how pardoning Maxwell or commuting her sentence would help Trump politically, either — all while highlighting the administration’s apparent indifference to Epstein and Maxwell’s victims. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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