BREAKING: Federal Judge Orders Release of Original Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts

Congress got what it wanted. One has to wonder whether its members will live to regret it.

A federal judge in Florida has granted a motion by the Department of Justice to release the grand jury transcripts from the original Jeffrey Epstein indictment. Judge Rodney Smith cited the legislation that Congress passed almost unanimously last month as a significant factor in this unusual step:

A federal judge in Florida has ordered the release of material from grand jury investigations into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein from 2005 and 2007.

A similar bid was rejected earlier this year, but U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said he was granting the DOJ's renewed request in light of the bill that Congress passed last month requiring the Justice Department to release all of its records related to Epstein.

Smith's order is an extraordinary step. Yashar Ali tweeted out a copy of Smith's order, which explains the earlier refusal under the normal rules of secrecy regarding federal grand jury deliberations. Smith agreed with Attorney General Pam Bondi's assertion that duly enacted legislation overrides the previous limits on exposure of grand jury materials in this case:

BREAKING

A federal judge has just ordered the Epstein grand jury transcripts to be unsealed.

Reminder these are a relatively small portion of the Epstein files overall. pic.twitter.com/7DSn774dVi

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 5, 2025

In case you're keeping score, Judge Smith was appointed by Donald Trump. Florida is, of course, Trump's home turf. Ali is correct that this is a "relatively small portion," but the grand jury testimony is likely to have most of the expected revelations of those associated with the Epstein network, especially given its proximity to Epstein's original trafficking activities. 

However, it's not everything, as Politico notes. Two other grand juries heard testimony in 2019, one for Epstein and the other for Ghislaine Maxwell. The judges controlling those transcripts had also refused to unseal them for the same reasons given by Smith. Bondi and the DoJ are already re-applying for release:

Earlier this year, three federal judges rejected requests by the department to unseal the grand jury transcripts made as part of the Trump administration’s effort to quiet growing demands by the MAGA base and others to provide greater transparency into the government files on Epstein and Maxwell. The judges said at the time that the department’s argument about the extreme public interest in the cases didn’t override federal law requiring grand jury material to be kept secret.

However, these judges also warned that the grand jury transcripts in New York are unlikely to deliver on expectations:

Judges in Florida and New York have said the grand jury records themselves are limited and unlikely to shed new light on the evidence against Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, and Maxwell, his onetime girlfriend who was convicted of sex trafficking. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence and seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump.

That may be particularly true in the Maxwell grand jury transcript. By 2019, the DoJ had determined that a broad prosecution of trafficking against Maxwell would be difficult due to the ambiguous nature of some victims-turned-groomed-recruiters. Prosecutors limited the scope of their indictment to the actions taken by Maxwell to traffic victims to Epstein only, making it a cleaner case. The only names that would be exposed in those transcripts are likely to be those of the victims. 

For better or worse, though, we'll get at least the original grand jury transcripts. Will those turn out to be bombshells, or more duds? We'll likely know before Christmas, given the due date in the statute Congress passed last month and Trump signed. Bondi seems motivated to expedite matters as well. Perhaps we'll finally close out the Epstein scandal before the new year. 

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