The Trump administration’s efforts to allay concerns about its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files by pushing for more information have been suspect, at best. The moves seem to be geared more toward creating the appearance of action than producing anything that would amount to the extensive transparency it promised.
The administration is practically daring people – including many MAGA supporters – to balk at the thin gruel it’s serving up.
And a new filing from the Justice Department overnight reinforces how little light the administration’s moves could shed.
The filing lays out its case for unsealing grand jury testimony, which was President Donald Trump’s first announced concession.
Plenty of experts regarded that move with skepticism. They noted the courts are often reluctant to disclose grand jury materials – an effort to unseal Epstein-related material in Florida already failed just last week – and those materials themselves will often be limited, even if they are released.
That certainly appears to be the case here.
In the filing, the Justice Department cites just two witnesses who remain alive whose testimony would be released.
“Here, there was one witness—an FBI agent—during the Epstein grand jury proceedings,” the filing says. “There were two witnesses—the same FBI agent from the Epstein grand jury proceedings and a detective with the NYPD who was a Task Force Officer with the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force—during the [Ghislaine] Maxwell grand jury proceedings.”
That would suggest the testimony is largely second hand, relying on law enforcement officials relaying the accounts of witnesses. Indeed, the filing says these officials “described statements of others, including statements of and concerning victims, many of whom are still alive.”
And beyond that, the filing says many of those accounts were already aired in criminal and civil trials – and by the witnesses themselves.
“Many of the victims whose accounts relating to Epstein and Maxwell that were the subject of grand jury testimony testified at trial consistent with the accounts described by an FBI agent and the detective from the New York City Police Department (‘NYPD’) in the grand jury and some have also made public those factual accounts in the course of civil litigation,” the filing says.
And finally, the Justice Department reiterates that even any transcripts that would be released would be subject to significant redactions. It again cited “appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information.”
It’s not clear precisely what redacting “other personal identifying information” means, in practice. (The government’s proposed releases and redactions are, of course, going to remain under seal.) But the government has previously expressed a desire not to “expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”
That certainly suggests the widespread appetite for learning more about Epstein’s supposed clients would go unsatisfied, even if these materials are released.
And indeed, that’s basically the main thing people are interested in.
A CBS News-YouGov poll this month showed Americans agreed 92-8% that the Epstein files “probably include damaging information about powerful or wealthy people.” And they said 89-11% that the government should “release all the information it has” about Epstein.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll also found Americans said by a massive 69-6% margin that they believed the federal government was “hiding information” about “alleged clients of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.”
That was a bigger margin even than the percentage who believed the government was hiding information about Epstein’s death (60-12%). (And even conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death tie into the idea that there are unknown clients; they hold that powerful people wanted him dead and killed him because of what he knew, rather than that he died by suicide.)
The DOJ’s Tuesday night filing is merely the latest reason to be skeptical of the Trump administration’s efforts to make this story go away.
In addition to the judge in Florida already rejecting the release of grand jury materials (the rules are less stringent in New York, where the most recent memo was filed), the administration’s second major concession was having Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interview Maxwell.
But we still don’t know what came of that or how fulsome the disclosure of the interview will be. Maxwell is someone the Trump Justice Department once labeled a brazen liar.
And the administration took very little care to insulate the situation from politics: Blanche isn’t just a political appointee; he’s also Trump’s own former personal lawyer. And then Trump repeatedly dangled the prospect of a pardon over Maxwell, reinforcing her likely motivation to say what the Trump administration wants.
On top of that, questions continue to be raised about the administration’s one big, recent disclosure: video footage of the area near Epstein’s cell on the night he died. The administration presented it as “raw” footage and proof that he couldn’t have been killed. But the video was missing at least one minute – potentially for technical reasons – and experts have said there’s evidence it’s not actually raw.
The administration’s handling of this case has been a mess in so many ways, from its promises of extensive disclosures to its conspicuously timed reversal on that to Trump’s false and misleading claims about his past ties to Epstein.
The question is increasingly whether people will view this as transparency – or just as a transparent ploy by the administration to try to move on without living up to its promises.
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