A federal judge has denied a Trump administration effort to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings related to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal investigation in Florida during the mid-2000s.
🔍 Background
The Department of Justice filed a petition last week seeking to make public transcripts from two grand juries convened in 2005 and 2007 in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the time, Epstein was being investigated for sex crimes involving minors. Though no federal charges were filed then, Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state charge of procuring a minor for prostitution — part of a controversial plea deal with federal prosecutors.
The DOJ argued that, because Epstein died in 2019 and due to the public interest surrounding the case, the usual secrecy surrounding grand jury records should be lifted. It also claimed the legal justifications for keeping them sealed no longer applied.
⚖️ The Judge’s Ruling
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg rejected the DOJ's request, pointing to binding precedent from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Florida. That circuit has ruled that federal judges cannot unseal grand jury records unless they fall under specific exceptions outlined in federal criminal rules — and Rosenberg concluded none of those exceptions applied in this case.
“The Court’s hands are tied — a point the Government concedes,” Rosenberg wrote.
The judge also denied the DOJ’s attempt to transfer the petition to a federal court in New York, where legal standards around public access to grand jury material are more flexible. The DOJ had hoped that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals — which governs Manhattan federal court — would be more likely to permit disclosure.
🧠 What This Means
This ruling applies only to Florida grand jury records from 2005–2007 and does not impact other ongoing DOJ efforts to unseal grand jury transcripts from Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s federal cases in New York from 2019 and 2020.
The DOJ continues to face scrutiny over transparency in the Epstein case, particularly under President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, after public backlash over withheld case files and broken promises to release them.
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