A federal judge on Aug. 20 bounced the Jeffrey Epstein transparency ball right back into the Department of Justice’s court, ruling that he would not be making public grand jury material from the sexual predator’s 2019 New York criminal case.
Other district court judges in New York and West Palm Beach also have denied the attempts for grand jury transcripts by DOJ in the Ghislaine Maxwell criminal case and in the FBI’s Palm Beach County criminal investigation in 2005-08.
Judge Richard Berman said in his order that the disclosure of 70 pages of grand jury material is dwarfed by the 100,000 pages the Justice Department says it has and called the motion to release it a “diversion.”
President Donald Trump continues to deal with controversy after promising to make the files public while he was on the campaign trail in 2024 and then backpedaling when DOJ announced on July 7 that it would not be releasing any more of its 300 gigabytes of evidence.
DOJ delivering Epstein files to House committee, which plans to make them public
But another possibility for transparency is evolving.
As DOJ delivers evidence subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee starting on Aug. 22, the panel has promised to make the material available to the public, but it’s not clear when.
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims still getting short shrift
In the meantime, Judge Bergman said a second reason for not releasing the grand jury material was the victims’ safety and privacy. It took 10 days in some instances to alert them that DOJ was seeking materials that might contain their names and stories.
Longtime victims attorney Brad Edwards of Fort Lauderdale pointed out in a letter to Berman that the lateness of notice could have violated the federal Crime Victims Rights Act ― a law that federal Judge Kenneth Marra of West Palm Beach said had been violated in 2007-08.
Though Berman had to drop the case against Epstein in August 2019 after Epstein’s death inside his Manhattan jail cell, Berman gave survivors a chance to have their voices heard during a special hearing. At least 23 made impact statements.
Congressional news conference after Labor Day
Upon their return from summer break, a bipartisan group of congressmen and women plan a news conference to push for more transparency.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky will be hosting survivors who have never before spoken publicly about their abuse. Also expected to be on hand are Edwards and Brittany Henderson, law partners who have represented victims since the first criminal prosecution of Epstein in the mid-2000s.
In the meantime, the House Oversight Committee on Aug. 18 began hosting private depositions of several former attorneys general and two former FBI directors as well as former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Those are scheduled to last into October but are taking place behind closed doors.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Jeffrey Epstein: Judge won’t release grand jury transcripts, only ‘snippet’ of DOJ files
Reporting by Holly Baltz, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
