The records from the grand jury investigation that preceded Ghislaine Maxwell’s indictment can be released, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
In a roughly 30-minute conversation,
and I explain how and why U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer granted the Trump Justice Department’s motion to unseal these files with a lengthy rebuke.“In its two rounds of applications to this Court to disclose records, DOJ, although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims, has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” Engelmayer wrote in a 24-page opinion and order.
Months ago, the Trump DOJ responded to the groundswell for the release of the Epstein files by seeking to unseal grand jury records, which are not expected to produce new revelations. Two federal judges in New York slammed the Justice Department’s maneuver as a “diversion” earlier this year.
After Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department revived their efforts to unseal the grand jury records, arguing that the law overcame the traditionally ironclad cloak of grand jury secrecy. Judges in New York and Florida have agreed.
Judge Engelmayer warned the public not to expect a bounty of new information in the Maxwell grand jury records that didn’t already come out of her trial. He said that the Justice Department “misled victims —and the public at large in holding out the Maxwell grand jury materials as essential to the goal of ‘transparency to the American public,’ when in fact the grand jury materials would not add to public knowledge.”
Engelmayer also amended the protective order to shield the privacy of victims and survivors, while ensuring that the Justice Department does not use the grand jury litigation to avoid releasing the investigative file.
Read the ruling in full here, and watch my conversation with my friend Katie in the video at the top of this newsletter.
