A federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s request to unseal transcripts from Florida grand jury proceedings related to a 20-year-old criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, saying her “hands are tied.”
U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida Robin Rosenberg wrote in her denial that an unrelated 2020 ruling by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “does not permit” her to unseal grand jury records in instances not covered by the criminal procedure rule, CNBC reported.
“Eleventh Circuit law does not permit this Court to grant the Government’s request; the Court’s hands are tied — a point the Government concedes,” Rosenberg wrote.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) petitioned the U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, to obtain the transcripts from two grand juries that convened there in 2005 and 2007, respectively.
In its argument for the transcripts, which are normally left sealed in such cases, the DOJ pointed to a “strong public interest in the historical investigation into Jeffrey Epstein,” the convicted sex offender suspected of trafficking minors to other pedophiles.
The DOJ also argued that “many of the rationales supporting grand jury secrecy” no longer apply since Epstein’s 2019 death, which the department claimed was a suicide earlier this month.
The controversial memo from the DOJ, headed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, also claimed there was no evidence of a “client list” belonging to Epstein to blackmail people with.
Neither argument provided by the department would qualify as an exception to the rule regarding the transcripts, Rosenberg wrote in her Wednesday decision.
The Florida judge’s ruling does not impact two other pending requests by the DOJ that seek grand jury transcripts related to the later investigations that led to the 2019 and 2020 New York indictments of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Trump administration’s interest in unsealing transcripts came after the DOJ’s conclusion on Epstein garnered backlash from lawmakers and some supporters, with the president ordering Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval” on the case, which he has repeatedly called a “scam” and “hoax” by Democrats.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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