A New York judge has refused a request from the Trump administration to unseal the federal grand jury transcripts in the case of sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The U.S. government had failed to cite any “special circumstance” that would warrant the release of the transcripts and exhibits in Maxwell’s sex abuse case, wrote Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in an opinion Monday.
“The Government’s invocation of special circumstances, however, fails at the threshold,” Engelmayer wrote. “Its entire premise — that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them — is demonstrably false.”
The decision comes after President Donald Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce “any and all pertinent” grand jury transcripts in the criminal cases of Maxwell and Epstein, in a bid to tamp down further conspiracies over the government’s botched handling of the so-called “Epstein Files.”
A Justice Department memo on July 6 stated that no further investigation was warranted into Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking schemes. It also concluded that Epstein had died by suicide and there was no evidence of a “client list” of high-profile associates.
The memo caused uproar on both sides of aisle, and among Trump’s MAGA base.
Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in a scheme to abuse and exploit girls with Epstein. The disgraced financier died by suicide in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.
It was unclear how much the transcripts would have revealed had they been released. The Justice Department acknowledged that the documents contained no testimony from witnesses, outside of law enforcement. Experts havesaid that these documents only account for a small fraction of the files related to the investigations.
Several Epstein survivors had supported making the grand jury transcripts public, while Maxwell had opposed the move.
Her legal team has asked the Supreme Court to take up her case, and her lawyers argued that releasing the raw transcripts would “inevitably influence any future legal proceeding” and cause “severe and irrevocable” reputational harm.
Maxwell has never been allowed to review the documents, they said in a memo to the court earlier this month.
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