The Trump administration has asked a judge to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. But that’s just a fraction of the so-called “Epstein files” that have torn the MAGA movement’s world wide open.
Public pressure has mounted in the days since the Justice Department announced an anticlimactic end to the Epstein saga, stating there was no evidence to support a “client list” of associates, whom some claim Epstein blackmailed, over their alleged involvement in his trafficking scheme.
For days, the White House has been consumed by the Epstein uproar with conservative commentators and prominent Republicans alike demanding increased transparency around the late disgraced financier’s case.
The president, who campaigned on releasing the so-called “Epstein files”, alleged they were a “hoax” made up by Democrats.
Trump then said on Tuesday it was up to his Attorney General Pam Bondi whether to release “credible” information from Epstein-related materials. On Thursday he ordered Bondi to seek a court’s permission to release “pertinent” grand jury testimony from the Epstein probe.
But the grand jury testimony is only a small portion of the thousands of documents related to the Epstein investigation and criminal case. Many documents are already held by the Justice Department may not have been presented to the grand jury.
What did the Trump administration ask the court?
In motions filed Friday evening in the Southern District of New York, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked the court to release transcripts associated with the grand jury indictments of Epstein and Maxwell.
Two months after a grand jury returned Epstein’s indictment in July 2019, the financier died by suicide while awaiting trial over the sex trafficking of minors.
The motion asks a judge to lift any protective orders and release the grand jury transcripts “as a matter of public interest.”
“Public officials, lawmakers, pundits, and ordinary citizens remain deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter. Indeed, other jurists have released grand jury transcripts after concluding that Epstein’s case qualifies as a matter of public concern,” the filing states.
The Justice Department will work with the SDNY to “make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personal identifying information prior to releasing the transcripts,” the motion reads.
The DOJ told the court it recently conducted a review in the Epstein case to “determine whether evidence existed that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.” But no evidence was uncovered.
What are transcripts likely to reveal?
Some expected a subsequent tranche of documents after the DOJ released “Phase 1” of the Epstein files in February. The release of the transcripts is unlikely to be that.
A grand jury is a “group of people selected to sit on a jury that decide whether the prosecutor’s evidence provides probable cause to issue an indictment,” according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. The group is provided with evidence and witness testimony to determine whether they justify an indictment.
Kristy Greenberg, the former SDNY Criminal Division Deputy Chief, explained on X: “Trump knows SDNY prosecutors seeking to indict Epstein and Maxwell didn’t ask questions about him in their grand jury presentations while he was POTUS. It’s a red herring to distract from the evidence that matters: witness interview notes, videos, photos, etc.”
Several public officials also criticized the Trump administration’s latest move.
Daniel Goldman, a New York Democratic Congressman and former lead counsel for the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, called the latest development “ridiculous.”
“This is Donald Trump’s effort…to gaslight you into thinking they’re turning over the Epstein files, when in reality, they’re turning over nothing that is relevant to what everybody deserves to know,” Goldman said in a video posted to social media.
“The grand jury testimony of course will only relate to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — the two people who were charged in the case,” he explained.
The testimonies will not include other investigative documents such as witness interviews, texts and emails, or photographs and videos. Goldman summarized: “It’s not going to include all of the evidence that will relate to other people involved in the sex trafficking ring.”
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar agreed with Goldman’s assessment.
“Everyone should understand why they are now calling for unsealing the jury testimony because it will only relate to Epstein and Maxwell,” she wrote on X. “Trump wanted this publicly, but privately knew it would be harmful to him and hoped the public would forget. There is more interest for this info now than ever.”
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What comes next?
Before anything is released Judge Richard M. Berman, who oversaw Epstein’s criminal case, will decide whether to allow the transcripts to be unsealed.
Berman is likely to consult with the victims and anyone discussed in the testimony who wasn’t charged, CNN reported.
It’s unclear how long that process could take.
The motions were filed minutes after the president filed a $10 billion lawsuit against right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal’s parent companies News Corp and Dow Jones. Trump had threatened to sue the paper if it published the story about a sexually suggestive birthday card he’s accused of giving the disgraced financier for his 50th birthday.
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the alleged message, typed out inside the outline of a naked woman, reads.
Trump vehemently denied having anything to do with the letter. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he told the outlet. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, claims the defendants “failed to attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proof that President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained,” according to the lawsuit. “The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists.”
Trump’s administration has declined to release a separate and likely much larger tranche of evidence that was mentioned in an index in what the administration labelled “phase one” of the release of Epstein evidence earlier this year.
