The Justice Department (DOJ) has requested transcripts of grand jury testimony of convicted sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton wrote to U.S. District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer on Aug. 4 asking for the records to be unsealed. DOJ officials want to compare grand jury “exhibits against the voluminous public and sealed exhibits offered at the Maxwell trial,” the letter said.
Bondi and Clayton also want to “review certain relevant civil litigation dockets of which the Government is aware to the extent such dockets are publicly available,” according to their letter.
They noted that details provided during the grand jury testimonies against Epstein and Maxwell have already been made public.
“The enclosed, annotated transcripts show that much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony—with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses—was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses,” the DOJ said.
The Epstein grand jury met twice in 2019, on June 18 and July 2 of that year, the letter said. Meanwhile, the Maxwell grand jury met three times, on June 29 and July 8 of 2020, and on March 29, 2021, it said.
The letter asked for the release of the five grand jury transcripts and told the judges that the DOJ may also request unsealing grand jury exhibits. The agency said it wants several more days to craft arguments for that request.
“The Government respectfully requests leave of the Court to advise the Court by August 8, 2025, of its position with respect to unsealing of the grand jury exhibits. Such timing will permit the Government to consider (with respect to its underlying position as well as with respect to any necessary redactions) any submissions to the Court by the victims identified in the grand jury transcripts, which are due to the Court on August 5, 2025,” the letter said.
Bondi and Clayton also wrote that the DOJ provided notices of the unsealing motions to every victim who is referenced in the grand jury’s transcripts, except for one that the DOJ has been unable to contact.
“With respect to victims who are not identified in the grand jury transcripts but who have previously received victim notifications in the Maxwell and Epstein matters, the Government will over the coming days alert those victims to the fact of the unsealing motions,” the filing said.
Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, was convicted of being an accomplice and is serving a 20-year term in a federal prison. Epstein was found dead in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges. Previously, he was sentenced to 13 months in work custody for procuring a child for prostitution and sex trafficking in 2008.
A number of House Democrats and some Republicans have said they want more information released to the public about the Epstein case.
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