
What could we learn from Epstein grand jury docs? And other key questions, answered.
Will a judge actually unseal the grand jury docs?
The fact that the Epstein investigation was based in New York may actually affect the outcome of Trump and Bondi's unsealing push because of the disparate ways courts handle grand jury material.
Records of grand jury investigations are some of the most closely held secrets in government and rarely yield to public interest except in extraordinary circumstances. Courts say that secrecy is necessary to protect the integrity of criminal investigations, witnesses who may provide sensitive testimony, victims who may be identified and the grand jurors themselves. There are a handful of narrow exceptions written into federal rules allowing for their release.
Courts have split, however, over whether judges have their own discretionary power to release grand jury material for reasons that aren't on the list — such as the historical significance of the secret records. For example, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has concluded that judges do not have discretion to release material outside the written rules. But in New York federal courts, where the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury investigations and prosecutions took place, the guiding precedent is looser.
Instead, judges are required to balance a slew of factors to determine whether grand jury material can be released: the historical significance of the records at issue, the amount of time that has elapsed since the investigation, whether the DOJ supports or opposes release, the specificity of the requested unsealing, whether any witnesses or victims are still alive and whether any of the material has previously been made public.
Those factors, applied to the Epstein saga, appear muddled at best. Trump has called for 'pertinent' grand jury records to come out. And one of the arguments DOJ previously made against disclosures was that it could damage the purported victims of Epstein's alleged sex trafficking conspiracy, many of whom are still alive.
In the guiding case that New York federal courts rely on, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that a lower-court judge — U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, a Clinton appointee — had properly denied a researcher's bid to access records of a McCarthy-era grand jury proceeding. Though the court agreed that district judges have broad discretion to order such releases, the judges pointed to Scheindlin's concern that 'the current disclosure would involve some witnesses who are still alive.'
The panel emphasized that 'in some situations historical or public interest alone could justify the release of grand jury information,' but it cited the examples of grand jury investigations related to John Wilkes Booth or Aaron Burr, noting that the long-term public interest in those cases could 'overwhelm' the need for secrecy.
What has DOJ previously said about the risks of releasing the Epstein files?
In 2017, the celebrity and entertainment news website Radar Online sued for the FBI's files on its investigation into Epstein up to that point. The outlet won access to some information, but most was withheld on various grounds, primarily the then-ongoing criminal case against Maxwell.

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