US justice department renews request to unseal Epstein grand jury materials | Jeffrey Epstein
The justice department renewed its request to unseal grand jury materials in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that led to his 2019 federal indictment on sex trafficking charges.
The submission, signed by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, notes that Congress made clear that court records must be released by approving the release of investigative materials last week.
In his filing in Manhattan federal court, Clayton asked for the materials to be released immediately because lawmakers had set a 30-day deadline after Donald Trump signed the measure into law last week.
The Justice Department said the congressional action overrides existing law that would allow grand jury records to be sealed.
But Judge Richard Berman rejected the Trump administration’s earlier request to make the grand jury transcripts public, citing a “substantial and compelling reason” to deny the request.
Berman said in August that 70 pages of grand jury transcripts and exhibits, including a PowerPoint presentation, four pages of call records and letters from victims and their attorneys, pale in comparison to the documents the government already has on Epstein.
in this decisionBerman wrote that “the government’s 100,000 pages of Epstein files and materials dwarf the 70 pages of Epstein grand jury materials” and that the request appeared to be a “diversion” from releasing documents in its possession.
The grand jury materials consist largely of the testimony of an FBI agent who was the only witness at the grand jury hearing, “who had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case and whose testimony was mostly hearsay.”
But Berman said the compelling reason to keep the documents under seal was “potential threats to the safety and privacy of victims.”
A similar request to seal grand jury testimony regarding the trial of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was also denied. Manhattan federal court judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that the government’s unsealing request “implies that the grand jury materials are an undiscovered mine of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or their collaborators, which they simply are not.”
Still, Clayton’s request comes shortly after he was tapped to investigate Epstein’s relationship with prominent Democrats and four months after Maurene Comey, one of the lead prosecutors in the cases against Epstein and Maxwell, was fired shortly before deputy attorney general Todd Blanche traveled to Florida to interview Maxwell.
Asked last week how the New York Epstein-Democrat investigation might affect the release of the government-held Epstein files, Attorney General Pam Bondi said: “We’re not going to say anything else on that because this is an ongoing investigation right now in the southern district of New York.”
