Justice Department lawyers said on July 29 that the only witness at Jeffrey Epstein’s grand jury was an FBI agent.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on the evening of July 29 in a court filing said that releasing grand jury transcripts related to the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell is in the “public interest.”
The new filing, which was submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, came after a judge asked the DOJ for more information in a bid to have the files released. Last week, a judge in Florida rejected the DOJ’s push to release grand jury materials in a separate bid.
In the filings, DOJ lawyers said the only witness at Epstein’s grand jury was an FBI agent. That same agent and a New York City Police Department detective were the only witnesses at Maxwell’s grand jury, DOJ prosecutors also said.
“Here, there was one witness—an FBI agent—during the Epstein grand jury proceedings,” the July 29 filing reads. “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 filing also states that many of the assertions made by Epstein’s victims who testified before a grand jury have already been made public. But the department said it would propose placing redactions on transcripts that contain victim-connected or other personal information.
“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 … in the grand jury and some have also made public those factual accounts in the course of civil litigation,” the DOJ said.
Maxwell’s four-week trial in 2021 included public testimony from alleged sex trafficking victims, associates of Epstein and Maxwell, and law enforcement officers. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida and is asking the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. She pleaded not guilty during the trial.
Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by state officials for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. He served 13 months in custody with extensive work release. He was arrested again in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges before he was found dead in his cell about a year later.
Also in the court papers, the DOJ’s attorneys noted the recent, intense public interest in releasing the Epstein files. Because of this recent phenomenon, the court should release the documents, they said.
“Beyond that, there is abundant public interest in the investigative work conducted by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into those crimes,” the filing states.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the governor said Epstein, whose death was ruled a suicide, cannot submit any arguments because he “has passed and therefore cannot assert a position.” They also said Maxwell, who was sentenced in 2022, recently submitted a request to review grand jury transcripts to respond, which was rejected by a judge.
The DOJ first sought court permission on July 18 to make public transcripts of the confidential testimony given by witnesses years ago in the two cases, but District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asked the government to flesh out the legal bases for the requests.
On July 23, District Judge Robin Rosenberg of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied the government’s petition to unseal grand jury transcripts between 2005 and 2007. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, she wrote at the time, did not permit her court to grant such a request and said arguments brought by the DOJ were not sufficient to comply with an exception to the rules.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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