NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein ’s sex trafficking case, joining two other judges who declined to release similar records from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse of young women and girls.
Judge Richard Berman, who presided over the 2019 case, ruled a week after another Manhattan federal judge turned down the government’s request to release transcripts from the grand jury that indicted Epstein’s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell.
Barring reversal on appeal, Berman’s decision appears to foreclose the possibility of federal courts releasing Epstein-related grand jury testimony. A federal judge in Florida declined to release grand jury documents from an investigation there in 2005 and 2007, though some material from a state case against Epstein was made public last year.
The rulings were a resounding repudiation of the Justice Department’s effort to unlock the records, a move the Republican administration undertook amid a fierce backlash over its refusal to release a massive trove of documents in its possession.
Berman and the judge in Maxwell’s case, Paul A. Engelmayer, made clear in their rulings that the grand jury transcripts contain none of the answers likely to satisfy the immense public interest in the case.
President Donald Trump had called for the release of transcripts amid rumors and criticism about his long-ago involvement with Epstein. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump promised to release files related to Epstein, but he was met with criticism — including from many of his own supporters — when the small number of records released by his Justice Department lacked new revelations.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday.
Each of the judges who declined to release transcripts cited longstanding grand jury secrecy rules and concluded that the government did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could justify making them public. Berman said it was the first time since 1973 that the government sought to unseal grand jury records for “special circumstances.”
The judges also noted that the Justice Department has voluminous records related to Epstein that aren’t covered by grand jury secrecy rules. Berman wrote that the scant information contained in 70…