A federal judge in New York on Wednesday ordered the release of sealed grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case, citing a new law that compels the Justice Department to make public material related to investigations of the disgraced financier.
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the 2019 grand jury transcripts sealed, joining two other federal judges who granted requests from the Justice Department to unseal case records as mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Berman’s ruling follows a decision Tuesday by a federal judge in New York who ordered that grand jury material from Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal prosecution be unsealed.
Epstein was indicted on charges of child sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit child sex trafficking in July 2019. The following month, he was found dead in his New York jail cell before his trial. His death was ruled a suicide.
Maxwell is a convicted sex offender serving a 20-year federal prison sentence at a minimum-security women’s prison facility in Bryan, Texas, for her role as Epstein’s accomplice. The Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s request to overturn her conviction in October.
Congress passed the transparency act last month in a near-unanimous decision. The act gave the Justice Department a 30-day deadline to make public all unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials it possesses concerning Epstein and Maxwell. That 30-day release period ends Dec. 19.
The act, which Trump signed swiftly into law under pressure from his own party, sets a higher bar for the information the Justice Department can withhold from the public. It allows exceptions for documents that would publicly identify Epstein’s victims and information that could jeopardize national security. And it allows the department to temporarily withhold information that would put at risk ongoing federal investigations and prosecutions.
“Safety and privacy are paramount” for the victims of Epstein’s abuse, Berman wrote in the opinion Wednesday.
A federal judge in Florida last week granted the unsealing of grand jury transcripts from a federal investigation of Epstein in the early 2000s. That investigation ended in a nonprosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two state charges of soliciting prosecution, one from a minor, to avoid federal prosecution.
All three federal judges who approved the release of grand jury information cited similar concerns about protecting victim privacy and well-being, issuing strong warnings to the Justice Department about the steps it should take to redact victim information. The Justice Department and Epstein’s estate did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment. Jack Scarola, an attorney for several of Epstein’s victims, said in a statement to MS NOW that his clients believe the release of grand jury transcripts “will add nothing of substance to the body of already available knowledge regarding the government’s mishandling of the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.” “The answers to how, why, and by whom Epstein and others were protected from full accountability for their crimes will not be found in those transcripts,” Scarola added. Lisa Rubin contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
