Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.
Rick Friedman | Corbis News | Getty Images
A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by the Trump administration to unseal the transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to a criminal investigation of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in Florida in the mid-2000s.
The ruling does not affect two other pending requests by the Department of Justice that seek to obtain transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York.
Those separate proceedings led to criminal indictments of them in 2019 and 2020, respectively, in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The Trump administration filed petitions to unseal transcripts of the grand jury proceeding related to Epstein and Maxwell last week.
The move followed days of criticism of President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi over the DOJ’s decision to withhold from the public investigative evidence about Epstein despite earlier promises it would be released.
The DOJ’s petition in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, sought to unseal transcripts of two federal grand juries convened in that court in 2005 and 2007.
Epstein was not charged federally at those times, but he did plead guilty to a Florida state court charge of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. Epstein’s plea in that case was part of deal he reached with federal prosecutors, who agreed not to prosecute him on federal charges.
The DOJ argued that disclosure of the transcripts — which normally are kept secret — was proper because there was a “strong public interest in the historical investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
The department also argued that “many of the rationales supporting grand jury secrecy” under federal criminal procedure rules “no longer apply” because Epstein died in 2019.
Judge Robin Rosenberg, in her denial of that petition, said that an unrelated ruling in 2020 by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court does not have the power to unseal grand jury records in instances not covered by the criminal procedure rule. The circuit handles appeals arising from federal district courts in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.
Neither argument advanced by the DOJ complies with that exception to the rule, Rosenberg wrote in her decision Wednesday.
“Eleventh Circuit law does not permit this Court to grant the Government’s request; the Court’s hands are tied — a point the Government concedes,” the judge wrote.
However, Rosenberg noted that the DOJ’s requested exception to grand jury secrecy on the grounds of a strong public interest is recognized in just two federal appellate circuits: the 2nd and the 7th.
The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals handles cases that arise from Manhattan federal court, where the other grand jury probes of Epstein and Maxwell were conducted.
The DOJ had asked Rosenberg to transfer its petition to her in Florida to Manhattan federal court, where the 2nd Circuit’s guidance on grand jury disclosures would apply.
But Rosenberg on Wednesday rejected that request, saying that the DOJ had not met the standards for such a transfer of the petition.
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