By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A U.S. judge said on Wednesday that the Trump administration is in a better position than federal courts to release materials that would satisfy public curiosity about the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case.
In rejecting the Justice Department’s bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Epstein in 2019, Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Richard Berman wrote that the 70-odd pages of materials the grand jury saw paled in comparison to the 100,000 pages the government has from its Epstein investigation but is not releasing.
The judge said the bid to persuade him to unseal the records was an apparent distraction from the Justice Department’s decision in July not to release its files and directly cited another judge’s decision earlier this month not to release similar materials from the grand jury that indicted Epstein’s longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The instant grand jury motion appears to be a ‘diversion’ from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession,” Berman wrote.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Berman’s decision came as President Donald Trump has faced criticism from his conservative base of supporters and congressional Democrats over the Justice Department’s decision not to release the files from its Epstein investigation.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty. His death in jail and his friendships with the wealthy and powerful sparked conspiracy theories that other prominent people were involved in his alleged crimes and that he was murdered.
Trump, a Republican, had campaigned for a second term in 2024 with promises to make public Epstein-related files, and accused Democrats of covering up the truth. But in July, the Justice Department declined to release any more material from its investigation of the case and said a previously touted Epstein client list did not exist, angering Trump’s supporters.
‘DIVERSION’
To try to quell the discontent, Trump in July instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek court approval for the release of grand jury material from Epstein’s case.
Evidence seen and heard by grand juries, which operate behind closed doors to prevent interference in criminal investigations, cannot be released without a judge’s approval.
Justice Department investigations typically collect more material than prosecutors ultimately present to grand juries. Some of that evidence is sometimes eventually disclosed to the public during criminal trials. The Justice Department does not routinely disclose its evidence in cases where a defendant pleads guilty or, like Epstein, never faces trial, but it would not require judicial approval to release such materials.
The grand jury that indicted Epstein heard from just one witness, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and saw a PowerPoint presentation and call logs, Berman wrote.
On Aug. 11, a different Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, denied the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury testimony and exhibits from Maxwell’s case, writing that the material was duplicative of public testimony at her 2021 trial. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence following her conviction for recruiting underage girls for Epstein.
“A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion – aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” Engelmayer wrote.
Maxwell had pleaded not guilty. After losing an appeal, she asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Daniel Wallis and David Gregorio)
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