WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sought to unseal grand jury exhibits and testimony from its cases against deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, but with redactions to protect victims.
The exhibits from the Epstein and Maxwell cases must be “subject to appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information,” reads the Aug. 8 filing signed by Jay Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“As there are parties whose names appear in the grand jury exhibits but did not appear in the grand jury transcripts, the Government is undertaking to notify such parties to the extent their names appear in grand jury exhibits that were not publicly admitted at the Maxwell trial (and they were not already notified in connection with the request to unseal the grand jury transcripts),” Clayton wrote.
Clayton, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, asked Manhattan US District Judge Richard Berman in the court document to hold off on unsealing the filings until after Aug. 14, while the parties are notified.
It’s unclear who may be involved. In a July 6 memo, President Trump’s DOJ and FBI revealed that Epstein’s sickening crimes impacted more than 1,000 victims.
On Monday, two of them blasted the Justice Department over its handling of the case.
“I am not sure the highest priority here is the victims, justice for the victims or combating child exploitation,” one letter submitted by a victim in Manhattan federal court stated.
“… Rather, I feel like the DOJ’s and FBI’s priority is protecting the ‘third-party,’ the wealthy men by focusing on scrubbing their names off the files.”
The other victim’s letter blasted the feds after Blanche met with Maxwell last month — before her unexplained transfer from a Florida federal jail to a Texas minimum-security facility.
“I wish you would have handled and would handle the whole ‘Epstein Files’ with more respect towards and for the victims,” the letter read. “I am not some pawn in your political warfare.
“What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely.”
Much of the Epstein-Maxwell exhibits have already been made public on dockets following the July 2019 arrest of Epstein — who committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10 of that year before heading to trial — and the arrest and 2021 conviction of Maxwell.
The British socialite had been serving a 20-year sentence in the low security FCI Tallahassee prison for conspiring with Epstein in sex trafficking young girls.
Trump ordered Bondi to release “credible” grand jury material on July 17 after his administration faced backlash for producing the brief, two-page memo on its “systematic review” of Epstein’s case that determined there was no evidence indicating third parties would be charged.
It also revealed no “client list” existed of influential and wealthy Epstein associates — despite the disgraced financier having enjoyed close relationships with attorneys, academics, businessmen, politicians and Hollywood stars.
Last week, former President Bill Clinton — who received political donations from Epstein — was subpoenaed by a Republican-led House panel for a deposition as part of a parallel investigation.
