Judge Denies Request to Unseal Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts in Florida

A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied a request by the Trump administration to release grand jury transcripts from an investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, stymying efforts by President Trump to blunt criticism from many of his supporters.

The denial came after the government last week asked the court to unseal those documents and to transfer the case to New York, where Mr. Epstein was indicted after a grand jury investigation in 2019. In its request, the Justice Department cited “special circumstances” that arose from “historical interest by the public,” asking the court to unseal transcripts from two grand juries convened in 2005 and 2007.

The decision is all but certain to frustrate the Trump administration’s frantic bid to show that no secrets remain from the government’s investigations into Mr. Epstein in Florida.

For weeks, the administration has sought to quell right-wing supporters who are demanding the release of more material related to Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender who hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.

Mr. Trump and his subordinates, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, have come under enormous pressure to release further details about Mr. Epstein. Ms. Bondi had promised to do so but reversed course after a joint memo issued by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department on July 6 indicated that no more disclosures about Mr. Epstein’s conviction would be forthcoming.

The memo concluded that after an exhaustive review of evidence in the cases against Mr. Epstein, the government had uncovered no new evidence “that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.”

In its request, the Justice Department did not suggest that the testimony would provide anything revelatory, but insisted that it would bolster the government’s claims that it had left no stone unturned.

“Since July 6, 2025, there has been extensive public interest in the basis for the memorandum’s conclusions,” it said. “While the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation continue to adhere to the conclusions reached in the memorandum, transparency to the American public is of the utmost important to this administration.”

The move to uncover more information has consumed the capital, with Speaker Mike Johnson sending lawmakers home early to avoid votes authorizing more releases and joining Mr. Trump in admonishing the public to drop the matter.

In recent days the White House — and Mr. Trump in a personal capacity — have also sought to discredit reporting by The Wall Street Journal that described intimate birthday letters Mr. Trump was said to have sent Mr. Epstein in 2003, raising further questions about their relationship.

On Friday, Mr. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, asserting the article was false. And on Monday, the White House acknowledged that it had retaliated against the publication by barring its reporters from traveling with the president to Scotland as part of the White House press pool.

In a brief 12-page order, Judge Robin L. Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied,” pointing to what she said was the government’s own concession in its filing that the laws on criminal procedure generally forbid courts from unsealing grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances.

She wrote that the Justice Department’s requests fell outside those narrow contexts, which can include sharing testimony with other department lawyers or as evidence in another related lawsuit.

She similarly dismissed the idea that moving the case to New York served any purpose other than getting around those rules, as the government’s case against Mr. Epstein in New York was already long over.

“The government’s request is not to assist with litigation in the New York federal proceedings,” she wrote. “The government wants the petition to be granted so that it can release evidence to the public at large.”

Judge Rosenberg ordered that a new case be created “in the public interest” that provided access to the government’s requests and the denial order, as the Epstein grand jury docket is still sealed.

But she ordered closed the case where the government filed its request, which started with the investigation into Mr. Epstein in Florida in 2005, and specified in bold typeface that no transcripts or grand jury materials that had not been previously disclosed would appear on the new docket.

The Justice Department has also requested that records be unsealed in New York, where Mr. Epstein faced a later investigation in 2019. It has also reached out to Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime associate who is serving a prison term for sex trafficking, to set up a meeting in a search for any missing answers about Mr. Epstein.

In a separate ruling on Wednesday, a federal judge in New York denied a request by Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers to gain access to grand jury transcripts related to her case, after the government had similarly moved to have those records unsealed.