Federal Judge Rejects the Justice Department's Bid to Unseal Epstein Grand Jury Records

On August 20, 2025, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in New York denied a Justice Department motion to unseal grand jury records from the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case. Berman found that the department already held far more material than the transcripts contained, noting that no victims had testified before the grand jury and that the only witness was a federal law enforcement agent. He wrote that "the information available in the grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigative information and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice." A separate judge had denied a parallel request for Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury records on August 11.

The unsealing motions came after the department announced in July 2025 that it would not release additional Epstein files, a reversal of earlier public commitments that drew criticism from across the political spectrum. Because grand jury material is a small and legally protected slice of an investigative file, seeking its release while withholding the far larger body of departmental records invited the reading that the motions were positioning rather than disclosure.

The rulings left the department's own files unreleased. Litigation and congressional pressure over the Epstein records continued into 2026.