Judge Calls Trump’s Bluff on Ghislaine Maxwell Grand Jury Materials

Last month, President Trump announced a bid to unseal grand jury transcripts from the criminal trials of notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell—apparently to quell outrage over his administration’s perceived lack of transparency on Epstein.

On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan denied Trump’s request to unseal such records related to Maxwell. Unsparingly, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer described the administration’s attempt as a ruse, noting that unsealing the materials would reveal nothing new to the public.

The administration’s argument that the material “would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes,” Engelmayer wrote, “is demonstrably false.”

Someone “deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter” who “reviewed these materials expecting, based on the Government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled,” he continued. “There is no ‘there’ there.”

Thus, Trump’s bid is “a far cry from every reported case” in which the court has previously been petitioned to unseal such records due to “special circumstances.”

Engelmawyer noted that he actually did consider unsealing the documents, but only because doing so “would expose as disingenuous” the administration’s explanations for seeking to do so. If the records were unsealed, he wrote, “A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.”

Moreover, Engelmayer said the administration’s motion was “weakened” by a number of “irregularities.” Curiously, it was filed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche alone. Made “under circumstances suggestive of haste rather than reflective deliberation,” it was also brief—all of three-and-a-half pages, with “no purporting materials”—and filed without notifying victims of Epstein and Maxwell in advance.

This is the latest hiccup for Trump as the Epstein fiasco continues to plague his administration. Last month, a federal judge in Florida denied a request to unseal Epstein grand jury materials, in an opinion that observed the government itself had, in its petition, explicitly acknowledged that its argument was insufficient. A request before another Manhattan federal judge to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts is still pending.

This story has been updated.