Federal judge orders unsealing of Epstein case grand jury records
A federal judge in Florida granted the Justice Department’s request on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, citing a new federal transparency law.
Judge Rodney Smith found that the Epstein Files Transparency Act of 2025 overrode the secrecy requirements of federal grand jury rules. The law, signed by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19, requires the attorney general to make public all unclassified DOJ records connected to Epstein and Maxwell.
It will be up to the DOJ to decide when and how that material is released, but the law requires the department to publish it within 30 days.
Smith’s ruling does not automatically release the records, but it marks a step forward. Requests for records to be unsealed in Epstein’s and Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases in New York are also pending.
The transcripts and other grand jury material in Florida and New York were used by prosecutors to bring initial charges against Epstein and Maxwell and represent a small fraction of the tranche of files related to the cases. The material is also one-sided by nature and could lack context or accuracy.
Federal judges in Florida and New York previously refused to release the material, saying it would violate grand jury rules, but passage of the transparency law has now changed that calculus in Florida.
As part of the earlier requests, judges said the contents that would be unsealed likely contained no new evidence.
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