by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News August 11, 2025
A federal judge on Monday denied the Department of Justice’s request to unseal grand jury materials the sex trafficking case of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
In his 31-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, wrote that the grand jury materials do not identify anyone other than Epstein or Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.
The DOJ had requested the release of grand jury testimony and exhibits from cases involving Epstein in New York.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking.
The judge noted that the government’s evidence at Maxwell’s weekslong trial included the testimony of women who were sexually abused as girls by Epstein and Maxwell, people who worked for Epstein and Maxwell, and law enforcement officials. Some of the evidence included photos and items collected from Epstein’s residences, flight logs, and an address book.
The evidence before the grand juries, meanwhile, was presented on a single day.
“On that day, it heard testimony from one person: a law enforcement agent who, acting as a summary witness, testified to information obtained in the Government’s investigation to support the charges in the proposed indictment,” the judge wrote, saying that agent was “responding to tightly structured questions” from an assistant United States attorney.
Engelmayer said that the government’s reasoning for unsealing the Maxwell grand jury materials — that it came after “abundant public interest” — “fails at the threshold.”
“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,” he wrote.
In his ruling, Engelmayer said that the government’s submissions failed to prove its claim that the grand jury materials “contained undisclosed information of significant historical or public interest.” He said that “with only very minor exceptions,” the evidence from the Maxwell grand juries is “a matter of public record.”
Judge denies Trump DOJ’s bid to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury records added by Editor Two on
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