US judge denies govt request to release Maxwell transcripts

A judge rejected the Trump administration's request to unseal grand jury transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell's case. Photo / Getty Images

A United States federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts from the criminal case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

District Judge Paul Engelmayer said there is little in the transcripts that is not already in the public record, and they do not identify anyone other than Maxwell and Epstein as having had sexual contact with underage girls.

The Justice Department had sought to release the transcripts to help defuse spiralling anger among President Donald Trump’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of Epstein’s crimes and high-level connections.

Engelmayer dismissed government arguments that the grand jury transcripts should be released because of “abundant public interest” in the case.

“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.

“Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine lode of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they definitively are not that,” the judge said.

“There is no ‘there’ there.”

The Manhattan-based judge also cast doubt on the Trump administration’s motivation for seeking the public release of the Maxwell transcripts and suggested it was “disingenuous”.

“A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion – aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” he said.

Maxwell opposed release of transcripts

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of recruiting underage girls for Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.

Her lawyers had opposed releasing the transcripts, saying it could potentially impact her ongoing legal appeals of her conviction.

The Justice Department is also seeking the release of the secret grand jury transcripts in Epstein’s case. That request is being handled by a different judge.

Trump’s supporters have been obsessed with the Epstein case for years and have been up in arms since the FBI and Justice Department said last month that the wealthy financier had committed suicide while in jail, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list”.

In a bid to calm the furore, the Justice Department asked for the release of the grand jury transcripts from the cases against Epstein and Maxwell.

US Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche – who is also Trump’s former personal lawyer – met recently with Maxwell but has not revealed what was discussed.

She was later moved to a minimum security prison.

Trump, 79, was once a friend of Epstein, and The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the President’s name was among hundreds found during a Justice Department review of the so-called “Epstein files”, though there has not been evidence of wrongdoing.

Maxwell is the only former Epstein associate convicted in connection with his activities, which right-wing conspiracy theorists allege included trafficking young girls for VIPs and other elites.

- Agence France-Presse