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LetMyPeopleVote

(170,228 posts) Mon Aug 11, 2025, 09:41 AM Aug 11

Judge Engelmeyer has denied the Trump administration's bid to unseal Jeffrey Epstein grand jury material

No one should be surprised by this. This was a stunt by trump to try to distract

BREAKING: Judge Engelmeyer has *denied* the Trump administrationâ€™s bid to unseal Jeffrey Epstein grand jury material. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T13:36:35.719Z

7 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Judge Engelmeyer has *denied* the Trump administration's bid to unseal Jeffrey Epstein grand jury material (Original Post) LetMyPeopleVote Aug 11 OP

trump administration claim for release was false LetMyPeopleVote Aug 11 #1

BREAKING A federal judge DENIES the Trump DOJ's motion to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell's grand jury records. riversedge Aug 11 #2

Either way he served his purpose newdeal2 Aug 11 #3

Basically, there's nothing new in the Grand Jury records, it was only one agent talking Prairie Gates Aug 11 #4

The judge's order is worth reading in its entirety. Ocelot II Aug 11 #5

Deadline: Legal Blog-Judge denies Trump DOJ motion to unseal Maxwell grand jury transcripts and exhibits LetMyPeopleVote Aug 11 #6

Deadline: Legal Blog-Another judge denies the DOJ's effort to unseal Epstein-related grand jury transcripts LetMyPeopleVote Aug 20 #7

LetMyPeopleVote

(170,228 posts)

1. trump administration claim for release was false

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 09:45 AM

Aug 11

Link to tweet

riversedge

(77,937 posts)

2. BREAKING A federal judge DENIES the Trump DOJ's motion to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell's grand jury records.

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 09:45 AM

Aug 11

BREAKING

A federal judge DENIES the Trump DOJ's motion to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell's grand jury records.

Background: https://allrisenews.com/p/epstein-gran

newdeal2

(4,201 posts)

3. Either way he served his purpose

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 09:54 AM

Aug 11

Now he can be the fall guy and we all move on.

Prairie Gates

(6,337 posts)

4. Basically, there's nothing new in the Grand Jury records, it was only one agent talking

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 09:55 AM

Aug 11

through the indictment and some evidence in a slideshow, and it all became public record subsequently in the trial anyway. So, why is the Government claiming special circumstances to override standard Grand Jury confidentiality?

Point being, the whole request was a sham, probably with the goal of having this judge reject it because it is a sham, since the only thing that matters is that Fox News can say "Look over there...it's the judge that's saying no, not Trump and the DOJ!"

The question is whether this transparent nonsense will satisfy the Dan Bonginos of the MAGA wing.

Ocelot II

(127,421 posts)

5. The judge's order is worth reading in its entirety.

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 10:32 AM

Aug 11

The DoJ gets its ass handed to it over and over. There's this nugget, for example: "The one colorable argument under that doctrine for unsealing in this case, in fact, is that doing so would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal. A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at “transparency” but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such." https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612.809.0.pdf at p. 20.

LetMyPeopleVote

(170,228 posts)

6. Deadline: Legal Blog-Judge denies Trump DOJ motion to unseal Maxwell grand jury transcripts and exhibits

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Mon Aug 11, 2025, 02:22 PM

Aug 11

Last edited Mon Aug 11, 2025, 03:27 PM - Edit history (1)

The judge called the whole premise of the Trump administration’s argument for unsealing “demonstrably false.”

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/ghislaine-maxwell-grand-jury-transcript-judge-denied-unseal-rcna224275

Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, noted that the Maxwell grand jury didn’t hear testimony from firsthand witnesses, victims or the like, but rather simply met “for the quotidian purpose of returning an indictment.” He said the evidence presented to the Maxwell grand jury “is today, with only very minor exceptions, a matter of public record.”

Rather than exposing new information, Engelmayer wrote, unsealing would expose the disingenuousness behind the government’s claim that unsealing would be revelatory.

“A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” the judge wrote.

“A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the Government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new,” he wrote, adding that the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”.....

Maxwell’s appeal is pending before the Supreme Court, and we could learn in the fall whether the justices will take it up.

A federal judge in Florida previously rejected unsealing grand jury information related to Epstein. And still pending in New York is the government’s motion to unseal grand jury information in his case there, which the government has been litigating in tandem with the Maxwell unsealing effort. The judge overseeing Epstein’s New York case has not yet ruled, but given the apparently limited nature of the grand jury presentation in that case as well, he could rule in a similar fashion to Engelmayer.

LetMyPeopleVote

(170,228 posts)

7. Deadline: Legal Blog-Another judge denies the DOJ's effort to unseal Epstein-related grand jury transcripts

Reply to LetMyPeopleVote (Original post)

Wed Aug 20, 2025, 02:36 PM

Aug 20

Another N.Y. judge previously rejected unsealing Ghislaine Maxwell’s transcripts. A third rejected unsealing the Epstein transcripts in Florida.

Another judge denies the DOJâ€™s effort to unseal Epstein-related grand jury transcripts www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...
— (@dee-denem.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T18:00:52.372Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/jeffrey-epstein-grand-jury-transcripts-unsealed-ruling-rcna224551

A federal judge on Wednesday denied the Trump Justice Department’s motion to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s New York sex trafficking case, dealing the DOJ its latest loss on the subject, in a ruling that spotlights the government’s bumbling legal effort and lack of transparency in the Epstein scandal.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Berman follows an Aug. 11 decision from another judge in New York that rejected the DOJ’s motion to unseal transcripts in the case of convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as a July ruling from a judge in Florida rejecting DOJ’s Epstein-related unsealing effort in that state.

Ruling against the DOJ in the Maxwell case, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that “[a] member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.”

Similarly rejecting the effort in Epstein’s case specifically, Berman wrote Wednesday that the unsealing motion appeared to be a diversion from the full scope of Epstein-related files in the government’s possession. He wrote that the grand jury testimony is just a “hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s alleged conduct, and that the information in the Epstein grand jury transcripts “pales in comparison” with the information in the DOJ’s hands. He also criticized the government for not properly notifying victims before filing the motion.

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