(Headline USA) Just two witnesses, both law enforcement officials, testified before the federal grand juries that indicted Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking charges, Justice Department officials said in support of their request to unseal transcripts of the usually secret proceedings. Only one of the witnesses, an FBI agent, testified during the Epstein proceedings.
Moreover, no victims were called to testify. According to the DOJ, Epstein had over 1,000 victims.
In a court filing late Tuesday, the officials again urged the court to release the records, citing huge public interest, but they also sought to assure the judges that making them public wouldn’t harm victims of the couple’s crimes.
While the memo didn’t detail what was in the grand jury testimony, it dampened expectations that the transcripts would contain new revelations, saying that “certain aspects and subject matters” contained in them became public during Maxwell’s trial in 2021 and that other details have been made public through many years of civil lawsuits filed by victims.
The Justice Department described the grand jury witnesses in response to questions from two judges who would have to approve the release of the transcripts. Grand jury transcripts are rarely released by courts, unless they need to be disclosed in connection with a judicial proceeding. The papers filed Tuesday cite a 1997 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said judges have wide discretion and public interest alone can justify releasing grand jury information.
The Epstein grand jury heard from just one witness, an FBI agent, when it met in June and July 2019, the government disclosed. The Maxwell grand jury heard from the same FBI agent and a New York Police Department detective when it met in June and July 2020 and March 2021, according to the submission.
The memorandum was signed by Jay Clayton, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and included the names of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The 2019 grand jury in New York appears to be a similar travesty to what took place with Epstein in Palm Beach in 2006, when state prosecutors only called two out of over a dozen victims to testify. As a result, Epstein was slapped on the wrist with procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He received what’s been widely described as a “sweetheart deal,” which saw him serve 13 months in a county jail.
Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was reportedly allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day.
After the Miami Herald published an expose on Epstein and his non-prosecution agreement in late 2018, Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. Those charges stemmed from the grand jury where no victims testified.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
