Overview

• U.S. District Judge Richard Berman denied the government’s motion on Wednesday to unseal grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
• He wrote that the request appeared to be a diversion and noted the roughly 70 pages of grand jury material pale beside about 100,000 pages held by the Justice Department.
• He emphasized that no victims testified before the grand jury and that the sole witness was an FBI agent whose testimony was essentially hearsay.
• He kept a related PowerPoint presentation and a hearing log under seal and warned that disclosure could threaten the privacy and safety of more than 1,000 victims.
• The decision rebuffs President Trump’s transparency push and leaves in place DOJ and FBI’s July stance that they will not release additional files, stating there is no secret client list and that Epstein died by suicide.