Request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts likely to disappoint, ex-prosecutors say
Attorney Sarah Krissoff, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from from 2008 to 2021, called the request in the prosecutions of Epstein and imprisoned British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell 'a distraction.'
' The president is trying to present himself as if he's doing something here and it really is nothing,' Krissoff told The Associated Press in a weekend interview.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the request Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying 'transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.'
The request came as the administration sought to contain the firestorm that followed its announcement that it would not be releasing additional files from the Epstein probe despite previously promising that it would.
Epstein is dead while Maxwell serves a 20-year prison sentence
Epstein killed himself at age 66 in his federal jail cell in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, while Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed after her December 2021 sex trafficking conviction for luring girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
Krissoff and Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor for 11 years before entering private practice in 2023, said grand jury presentations are purposely brief.
Naftalis said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment but 'it's not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.'
'People want the entire file from however long. That's just not what this is,' he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages.
'It's not going to be much,' Krissoff said, estimating the length at as little as 60 pages 'because the Southern District of New York's practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.'
'They basically spoon feed the indictment to the grand jury. That's what we're going to see,' she said. 'I just think it's not going to be that interesting. ... I don't think it's going to be anything new.'
Ex-prosecutors say grand jury transcript unlikely to be long
Both ex-prosecutors said that grand jury witnesses in Manhattan are usually federal agents summarizing their witness interviews.
That practice might conflict with the public perception of some state and federal grand jury proceedings, where witnesses likely to testify at a trial are brought before grand juries during lengthy proceedings prior to indictments or when grand juries are used as an investigatory tool.
In Manhattan, federal prosecutors 'are trying to get a particular result so they present the case very narrowly and inform the grand jury what they want them to do,' Krissoff said.
Krissoff predicted that judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases will reject the government's request.
With Maxwell, a petition is before the U.S. Supreme Court so appeals have not been exhausted. With Epstein, the charges are related to the Maxwell case and the anonymity of scores of victims who have not gone public is at stake, although Blanche requested that victim identities be protected.
'This is not a 50-, 60-, 80-year-old case,' Krissoff noted. 'There's still someone in custody.'
Appeals court's 1997 ruling might matter
She said citing 'public intrigue, interest and excitement' about a case was likely not enough to convince a judge to release the transcripts despite a 1997 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said judges have wide discretion and that public interest alone can justify releasing grand jury information.
Krissoff called it 'mind-blowingly strange' that Washington Justice Department officials are increasingly directly filing requests and arguments in the Southern District of New York, where the prosecutor's office has long been labeled the "Sovereign District of New York" for its independence from outside influence.
'To have the attorney general and deputy attorney general meddling in an SDNY case is unheard of,' she said.
Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law School criminal law professor, said judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases may take weeks or months to rule.
'Especially here where the case involved witnesses or victims of sexual abuse, many of which are underage, the judge is going to be very cautious about what the judge releases,' she said.
Tradition of grand jury secrecy might block release of transcripts
Bader said she didn't see the government's quest aimed at satisfying the public's desire to explore conspiracy theories 'trumping — pardon the pun — the well-established notions of protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process.'
'I'm sure that all the line prosecutors who really sort of appreciate the secrecy and special relationship they have with the grand jury are not happy that DOJ is asking the court to release these transcripts,' she added.
Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, called Trump's comments and influence in the Epstein matter 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinarily unusual' because he is a sitting president.
He said it was not surprising that some former prosecutors are alarmed that the request to unseal the grand jury materials came two days after the firing of Manhattan Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, who worked on the Epstein and Maxwell cases.
'If federal prosecutors have to worry about the professional consequences of refusing to go along with the political or personal agenda of powerful people, then we are in a very different place than I've understood the federal Department of Justice to be in over the last 30 years of my career,' he said.
Krissoff said the uncertain environment that has current prosecutors feeling unsettled is shared by government employees she speaks with at other agencies as part of her work in private practice.
'The thing I hear most often is this is a strange time. Things aren't working the way we're used to them working,' she said.
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The justice department released an 11-hour video of jail footage in the hours before and after his death, though there seems to be almost three minutes of footage missing, leading to further scrutiny. Bondi has said that missing footage is because the Bureau of Prisons was resetting video. There is also much to be discovered on how Epstein was able to evade justice for so long. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter, told the Atlantic her 'one nagging question' goes back to 2008, when the justice department decided not to fully go after Epstein after local and state authorities first were looking into his crimes. 'Who were the people behind that in the beginning?' Brown said. 'Because if they had done their jobs, of all these people in 2006, 2007, and 2008 – if all those people working for us, the American public, had done their jobs, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. A lot of those victims would've never been victimized.' Solve the daily Crossword
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Meanwhile, the US supreme court is due to wade into the controversy and decide whether to hear a bid by Maxwell to overturn her criminal conviction. Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a jail cell in New York while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Trump, dogged by questions about his ties to Epstein, headed to Scotland on Friday for a trip that will mix golf with politics mostly out of public view. Protests await the president in the UK over his extreme agenda while scandal nips at his heels in the US. Further talking to reporters after Friday's meeting, Markus said: 'We don't know how it's going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she's ever been given to answer questions about what happened, and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein. And she's the person who's answering those questions.' Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw Maxwell's 2021 trial have said that she made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She was convicted for sex trafficking and other crimes, and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. 'People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,' Markus said. Asked if Maxwell had received an offer of clemency from the government, Markus said no offer had been made. Trump rejected the idea of a pardon for Maxwell after landing in the UK on Friday. 'A lot of people have been asking me about pardons' for Maxwell, he said. 'Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons.' Although the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, earlier this year had promised to release additional materials related to possible Epstein clients, the justice department reversed course this month and issued a memo concluding there was no basis to continue investigating and there was no evidence of a client list or blackmail. Since then, the department has sought permission to unseal grand jury transcripts from its prior investigations into Epstein and Maxwell. On Wednesday, US district judge Robin Rosenberg denied one of those requests. Trump's name, along with many other high-profile individuals, appeared multiple times on flight logs for Epstein's private plane in the 1990s, while several media outlets have this month reported previously unpublicized and friendly communications from the US president to the high-profile financier. Meanwhile, the supreme court justices, now on their summer recess, are expected in late September to consider whether to take up the appeal by Maxwell against her conviction in 2021 by a jury in New York for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. Maxwell's lawyers have told the supreme court that her conviction was invalid because a non-prosecution and plea agreement that federal prosecutors had made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also shielded his associates and should have barred her criminal prosecution in New York. Her lawyers have a Monday deadline for filing their final written brief in their appeal to the court. Some legal experts see merit in Maxwell's claim, noting that it touches on an unsettled matter of US law that has divided some of the nation's regional federal appeals courts. Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said there was a chance that the supreme court would take up the case, and noted the disagreement among appeals courts. Such a split among circuit courts can be a factor when the nation's top judicial body considers whether or not to hear a case. 'The question of whether a plea agreement from one US attorney's office binds other federal prosecution as a whole is a serious issue that has split the circuits,' Epner said. While uncommon, 'there have been several cases presenting the issue over the years', Epner added. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting Solve the daily Crossword
