Federal judges in New York and Florida have agreed to unseal grand jury documents tied to investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, paving the way for the Department of Justice to release all the files in its possession as pressure builds to expose an alleged network of powerful figures who enabled the late sex offender.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that grand jury records in the sex trafficking case against Epstein must be unsealed after Donald Trump signed a measure that compels his administration to publicly release them.
Wednesday’s order marks the third and final ruling to unseal grand jury materials in the three federal cases against Epstein and his associate.
The Justice Department has until December 19 to make those materials — and thousands of other documents surrounding Epstein — publicly available.
But it’s unclear whether any of the documents will shed new light on Epstein after the Justice Department called on the courts for permission to release them, an endeavor that one judge said would “not add to public knowledge” and another said amounts to only a “hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s crimes.
The grand jury materials represent only a fraction of the documents in the Justice Department’s possession.
The government is preparing to release potentially tens of thousands of pages of documents, including FBI notes throughout the investigations, transcripts of witness interviews, videos and photographs, Epstein’s autopsy report, and, of course, flight logs and passenger lists from Epstein’s plane.
Questions about the fate of those documents have dominated the president’s second term after he pledged during his campaign to release them. His administration released some documents to a group of far-right influencers earlier this year, though most of those documents were already public.
In July, the Justice Department determined “no further disclosure” in the Epstein case “would be appropriate or warranted,” which only fueled scrutiny into the president’s relationship with Epstein, who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of minors before he was found dead in his jail cell in 2019.
Last month, after a mounting pressure campaign among members of Congress, including his one-time Republican allies, Trump reluctantly agreed to sign a measure that compels the Justice Department to release all investigative materials from the Epstein case in its possession.
Florida grand jury investigation
Transcripts of the grand jury proceedings from an abandoned federal case in Florida could reveal why, exactly, federal prosecutors decided against moving forward with a case against Epstein in 2007.
The materials in Florida stem from an aborted effort to federally prosecute Epstein that resulted in what critics have called a “sweetheart” deal for state charges and a brief jail sentence.
A Palm Beach grand jury indicted Epstein on one state felony charge of solicitation of prostitution in 2006, a case that was then referred to the FBI. In 2007, an assistant U.S. attorney crafted a draft indictment outlining 60 criminal counts against Epstein, along with a memo of evidence against him.
Then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta arranged a controversial agreement for Epstein to plead guilty to two state charges as well as a prison sentence and a requirement that he register as a sex offender in exchange for the federal case to be dropped.
Epstein then pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. He was released after serving less than 13 months in state prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury evidence
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes associated with Epstein’s decades-long scheme to recruit young women and girls.
From 1994 to 2004, Maxwell and Epstein worked together to recruit young girls and entice them to travel to Epstein’s properties, according to prosecutors. During a monthlong trial in 2021, survivors testified in Manhattan federal court that Maxwell had groomed them, taken their passports, and sexually abused them.
The grand jury records are expected to include testimony from the FBI agent and a New York Police Department detective who gave evidence to jurors who indicted her.
But New York District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made clear that the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”
“They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” he wrote. “They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes.”
Epstein’s trafficking case in New York
The only witness to testify before the grand jury that indicted Epstein on trafficking charges before he killed himself while awaiting trial in 2019 was an FBI agent who “had no direct knowledge of the facts of the case and whose testimony was mostly hearsay,” according to New York District Judge Richard M. Berman.
That agent testified over two days in 2019, while the rest of the grand jury presentation consisted of a PowerPoint slideshow and four pages of call logs.
In Wednesday’s order, Berman noted that the transparency law signed by Trump “unequivocally intends to make public Epstein grand jury materials and discovery materials” that were previously sealed.
He also stressed that the safety and privacy of victims “are paramount.”
