A federal judge in Manhattan on Monday shot down the Trump administration’s unusual request to unseal grand jury transcripts from the Justice Department’s investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell, the predator and longtime confidant of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Justice Department filed the request last month, arguing there was “abundant public interest” in making the records public. The move was widely seen as an effort to ease growing public backlash over the administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, a President Barack Obama appointee, wasn’t convinced. In a sharply worded ruling, he said there were no special circumstances to justify opening up the secret proceedings.
“Its entire premise — that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them — is demonstrably false,” Engelmayer wrote, per NPR. He added that the materials contained no new revelations about Epstein’s clients, no fresh leads on the source of his wealth, and no insight into the circumstances surrounding his death. “There is no ‘there’ there,” the judge concluded.
Epstein died in a federal detention center in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death, ruled a suicide, has fueled years of conspiracy theories about his abuse of underage girls and the network of associates linked to him.
President Trump and several top officials in his administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel, have long played into those theories. Trump, who knew Epstein personally, publicly called for more transparency on the case. But in July, the Justice Department and FBI released a memo debunking several popular claims and announcing no further Epstein-related materials would be made public. That decision infuriated parts of Trump’s MAGA base, leading to renewed demands for more disclosures.
TRUMP on EPSTEIN: The whole thing is a hoax. It’s just a way to divert attention to something that is total bullshit pic.twitter.com/vmag9CUGtJ
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 6, 2025
To contain the political fallout, Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue the release of grand jury records from both the Epstein and Maxwell cases. The department then petitioned three federal judges, two in Manhattan and one in Florida, to unseal the transcripts.
In Florida, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg rejected the request outright, citing 11th Circuit precedent barring the release of such records. In Manhattan, Engelmayer operates under the 2nd Circuit, which allows grand jury materials to be made public only in rare, exceptional circumstances. He ruled that the standard was not met here.
Even if the transcripts had been made public, legal experts doubted they would reveal anything explosive. Court filings indicate that in Epstein’s case, only a single FBI agent testified before the grand jury. In Maxwell’s case, the same agent and a New York Police Department detective were the only witnesses.
So far, two hardcore MAGA Republican judges have blocked the release of Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts.
The weird part? They’re both Obama appointees. pic.twitter.com/TDiIa9OhkA
— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) August 11, 2025
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for facilitating Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.
The ruling comes amid new developments behind the scenes. Late last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal attorney to Trump, conducted a closed-door interview with Maxwell about Epstein. The Justice Department has not said what was discussed, who else was present, or whether any new leads emerged from that meeting.
For now, Judge Engelmayer’s decision effectively closes the door on Trump’s high-profile push for these records in New York, leaving the administration without one of the tools it had hoped to use to quell outrage over its handling of the Epstein saga.
