US Justice Department asks court to release Epstein grand-jury transcripts

President Donald Trump said he had directed Attorney-General Pam Bondi to make the request seeking the release of testimony related to the case of the late alleged sex-trafficker-to-the-famous.

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The US Justice Department on Friday asked a federal court to publicly release grand-jury transcripts from the sex-trafficking cases of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

“This court should conclude that the Epstein and Maxwell cases qualify as a matter of public interest, release the associated grand jury transcripts, and lift any pre-existing protective orders,” the department said in a filing signed by Attorney-General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche.

The Justice Department said in the filing that it would work with the US attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the charges against both, to appropriately redact the documents to protect victims.

Grand jury testimony is subject to strong secrecy protections, with only narrow exceptions. The department noted the tradition of keeping such material out of the public domain but said this case was a rare special circumstance in which the public release of the records is appropriate.

Bondi and Donald Trump. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP

In a social-media post Thursday, President Trump said that he had directed Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval!” Bondi then said on X that she was ready to ask a court to unseal the transcripts related to Epstein.

The President’s statement came after the publication of a Wall Street Journal article about a letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein. Trump has denied writing the letter and drawing the picture, and threatened legal action against The Wall Street Journal in response.

Pages from the book – assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006 – are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.

Questions around the grand-jury materials have swirled around Bondi since she took office. Some Trump allies, including right-wing influencers, began calling for the attorney-general’s resignation after the Justice Department backtracked on a promise to release what Bondi once called a “truckload” of documents from the FBI’s Epstein investigation.

The broad release of Epstein files in the government’s possession became a rallying cry among some of Trump’s top allies during the Biden administration and 2024 campaign. Some

Democrats have joined the calls for more transparency in recent days.

It’s unclear how a judge might respond to the Justice Department request. Lawyers for witnesses who testified in the grand jury proceedings could also make their own bids to the court to keep the materials secret, arguing that the release could expose sensitive or personal information about Epstein’s accusers.

During grand jury proceedings, prosecutors present evidence and witness testimony to a panel, which then votes on whether to hand up an indictment. Unlike a trial, these proceedings aren’t public.

The US attorney’s office in Manhattan in 2019 charged Epstein with sex-trafficking minors in New York and Florida. Epstein died in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, and the medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

In a case stemming from a Freedom of Information Act request for Epstein-related materials, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked a judge to keep Epstein-related documents private. They argued the release of the materials could negatively impact any potential retrial of Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of sex-trafficking offences, the declarations said. The judge in 2024 declined to make the materials public.

Maxwell, who is currently in prison, has appealed her case to the US Supreme Court.

Dow Jones Newswires