Grand jury transcripts the Justice Department is asking to unseal from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell include testimony from only two witnesses, both law enforcement officials, according to a Justice Department memo submitted late Tuesday.
The admission raises further questions about whether the Trump administration’s long-shot bid to unseal the confidential material will be enough to satisfy the demand for more transparency surrounding the Epstein investigation.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed a motion to unseal transcripts from grand juries used to investigate Epstein in New York and Florida.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche personally filed the unusual request, citing “the public interest in the investigative work conducted by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into Epstein…” The move came amid fierce backlash over the department’s backtracking on a promise to release additional Epstein materials.
The Florida request was swiftly denied, but Judge Richard Berman in New York asked for more specific details about why this information should be disclosed before ruling.
Late Tuesday, the DOJ submitted its response to the court. “Here the passage of time has not dulled the public’s interest in these cases,” Jay Clayton, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote.
The memo disclosed previously unknown information about the witnesses who were used in the grand jury.
“Here, there was one witness – an FBI agent — during the Epstein grand jury proceedings. There were two witnesses – the same FBI agent from the Epstein grand jury proceedings and a detective with the NYPD who was a Task Force Officer with the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force – during the Maxwell grand jury proceedings,” the memo stated.
DOJ reiterated that victims testified at trial, but in the grand jury their testimony was read in by these investigators.
“Many of the victims whose accounts relating to Epstein and Maxwell that were the subject of grand jury testimony testified at trial consistent with the accounts described by an FBI agent and the detective from the New York City Police Department (‘NYPD’) in the grand jury and some have also made public those factual accounts during civil litigation,” DOJ wrote.
Epstein’s 2019 death while awaiting trial has been ruled a suicide. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She met with Blanche last week to answer additional questions about the investigation, but it is unclear what she told the government or how it could impact her case.
Berman has given victims and Epstein’s representative until August 5 to weigh in on the DOJ’s request. He says he will decide “expeditiously.”
