A U.S. judge denied on Monday the Justice Department's bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted the late financier Jeffrey Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking charges, writing that the records did not answer lingering questions from the public about their crimes or Epstein's death.
Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who reviewed the transcripts of the witness testimony heard by the grand jury and other evidence the panel saw, wrote that the government's assertion that the materials would reveal meaningful new information about Epstein's and Maxwell's crimes was "demonstrably false."
"A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the Government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new," Engelmayer wrote.
"Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine load of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they are definitely not that," the judge wrote.
