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A Manhattan federal judge rejected a petition from President Donald Trump's administration to unseal documents in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell on Monday (August 11), the New York Post reports.
“The Government does not seek tailored disclosure of discrete items within a grand jury record,” U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote in his opinion, concluding that the government failed to make a compelling case for disclosure of the grand jury testimony.
“Nor does it seek leave to disseminate grand jury materials to a specified audience. It seeks disclosure to the public at large of the entire proceedings before the Maxwell grand jury, subject only to redactions aimed at protecting privacy.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi petitioned for the documents related to Maxwell, a longtime confidant of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to be unsealed on July 18 amid scrutiny over the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein investigation. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year-sentence, was recently moved from Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee to Federal Prison Camp Bryan after speaking with the Department of Justice about Epstein.
Federal Prison Camp Bryan typically houses nonviolent offenders and is less restrictive than the Tallahassee federal prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons hasn't publicly given a reason for Maxwell's relocation, however, the move was made after she met with Blanche in an effort to get immunity by providing details about Epstein.
Trump, whose name reportedly appeared seven times in Epstein's flight logs, and his administration have recently faced scrutiny for not releasing more information about the Epstein files, which led to the president publicly directing Bondi to release "pertinent" grand jury testimony. On July 16, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing a majority of Americans (63%) disapproved how Trump and his administration had handled the Epstein files.
Podcaster Joe Rogan, who staunchly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, criticized the administration's announcement claiming there was never a list or footage revealing Epstein's alleged clients, which was a talking point of conservative pundits for years.
“They’ve got videotape and all [of] a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said on the episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast released on July 15.
“You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,'” he added, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel's appearance on his podcast in June. “Like, what? Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s–t? Why’d they say that? Didn’t Pam Bondi say that?"
Bondi had previously claimed that the supposed Epstein list was on her desk awaiting review months ago and told reporters that the FBI was reviewing "tens of thousands of videos" of Epstein "with children or child porn" on July 1 before the DOJ suddenly announced that there was no "Epstein list" or incriminating footage of his associates days later. President Trump spent months claiming he had plans to release everything the government had on Epstein and his alleged associates, which included releasing The Epstein Files: Phase 1 in February, though the files revealed next to no new information.