U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg denied the government’s petition to unseal grand jury transcripts between 2005 and 2007.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied a Department of Justice request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to a mid-2000s criminal investigation into sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) petitioned a federal court in Florida to release the transcripts of testimony from witnesses who appeared before a grand jury in the first case against Epstein.
In a 12-page order on July 23, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg denied the government’s petition to unseal those transcripts, adding that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit doesn’t permit her court to grant such a request. She said that arguments brought by the DOJ were not sufficient to comply with an exception to the rules.
The government had not requested the grand jury testimony for use in any judicial proceeding, Rosenberg wrote, saying that district courts are usually barred from unsealing grand jury testimony under most circumstances.
“Eleventh Circuit law does not permit this Court to grant the Government’s request; the Court’s hands are tied—a point the Government concedes,” the judge wrote.
The DOJ’s request stemmed from federal investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007, according to court papers.
Epstein was convicted and sentenced in 2008 in a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute after pleading guilty.
He was later arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, while his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced in a separate case in 2022 after she was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offenses. He was found dead in his New York jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019 in what was ruled a suicide.
Requests to unseal transcripts in Manhattan federal court related to the indictment brought against Epstein and Maxwell were also submitted by the DOJ this month.
In that bid, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote on July 22 that he would quickly issue a ruling on the petition but needs more information.
“The Court intends to resolve this motion expeditiously,” Engelmayer said in a four-page order. “However, the Court cannot rule on the motion without additional submissions.”
President Donald Trump this past week said that he’d ordered U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of additional Epstein documents and other material.
