A federal judge allowed the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Rodney Smith wrote in a brief order that a recent law signed by President Trump supersedes rules blocking the release of grand jury materials. “The Government previously sought to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” he wrote. “That request was denied because it violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6 and the Government failed to show that disclosure was appropriate under any of the exceptions set out in Rule 6(e)(3).”
Upon the signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, however, which “applies to unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials that relate to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” the law “trumps Rule 6’s prohibition on disclosure.”
The law directs the Attorney General to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices.”
The order follows Attorney General Pam Bondi writing in a motion to the court that it “should authorize the Department of Justice to release the grand jury transcripts and lift any preexisting protective orders that would otherwise prevent public disclosure.” The filing states that the DOJ will “work with the relevant United States Attorney’s Offices to make appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information. Because of the Act’s thirty-day deadline for production, the Department of Justice requests an expedited ruling on this motion.”
It further declared that in order for the DOJ to comply with the Act, the court must “enter an order allowing the Department to publicly release the grand-jury materials in this case as well as lift any and all preexisting protective orders.”
