The U.S. Justice Department renewed its request Monday to unseal grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases, arguing they should be made public under a new law requiring the government to open its files on the late financier and his longtime confidante.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton cited the Epstein Files Transparency Act — passed by Congress last week and signed into law by President Donald Trump — in court filings asking Manhattan federal judges Richard Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer to reconsider their prior decisions to keep the material sealed.
The Justice Department interprets the transparency act “as requiring it to publish the grand jury and discovery materials in this case,” said the eight-page filings, which also bear the names of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her second-in-command, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
reminder that Trump could have unilaterally ordered this at any time
Not this (grand jury files) in particular, but the files that the grand jury had access to came from DoJ and can be released by his administration. Though the new bill may convince the judges to allow them to be released. I still think it’ll be a “look what we did” without DoJ actually revealing anything they couldn’t have revealed on their own.