The Trump administration’s move to release some material from the Jeffrey Epstein files is perfectly engineered to look like it seeks meaningful disclosure of explosive secrets, but actually to result in production of next-to-nothing, if anything at all. It’s a nuanced performance piece, more about appearances than genuine transparency. 

The administration is leaning heavily on this bit of artifice. This week, for example, Vice President JD Vance trumpeted President Donald Trump’s commitment to coming clean: “First of all, the president has been very clear. We’re not shielding anything. The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and, frankly, to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” Nice sound bite. Too bad it’s false. 

As the Epstein scandal expanded in mid-July, Trump posted on social media that, “I have asked the Justice Department to release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval.” The next day, Attorney General Pam Bondi – who had, days before, publicly concluded that the case should be closed and no further public disclosures made – filed motions seeking to unseal transcripts of grand jury testimony underlying the prosecutions of Epstein (who received a preposterously lenient plea deal in Florida in 2008 and then was indicted by the Southern District of New York in 2019 before he died in prison weeks later) and Ghislaine Maxwell (who was indicted in the SDNY in 2020, tried and convicted in 2021, and sentenced to twenty years in prison in 2022). 

Note the subtle (but vital) discrepancy between Vance’s statement and reality. Neither Trump nor Bondi have released, nor requested the release of, “all credible information,” as Vance claimed. The actual request to unseal “grand jury testimony” is far narrower. And, as Trump himself seemingly recognized in his initial social media post (“subject only to Court Approval”) only a federal judge, and not DOJ unilaterally, can authorize public disclosure of grand jury testimony. 

But it’s entirely unclear whether federal judges will permit the unsealing of any grand jury materials. The problem for DOJ – or perhaps the convenient and intended fallback – is that grand jury testimony is presumptively secret, and the federal rules lay out specific scenarios in which it can be disseminated. All those exceptions apply where information is necessary to another legal proceeding – if a criminal defendant needs grand jury materials to make a motion to dismiss, for example, or if some other prosecutor or military tribunal needs the information to build a new case. There’s no listed statutory exception for “The public is going nuts to know more,” or “The President is having a meltdown.” 

Accordingly, a federal judge in Florida last week denied DOJ’s request to unseal grand jury testimony relating to the botched 2008 investigation of Epstein by then-U.S. Attorney (later Trump Cabinet secretary) Alexander Acosta. “The court’s hands are tied – a point the Government concedes,” the judge found. The law’s the law.

Indeed, the Justice Department in its brief to a New York federal judge acknowledged that none of the listed statutory exceptions apply. Instead, DOJ (in a motion submitted directly by Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche) asked the judge to recognize a “catch-all” exception for “special circumstances… even outside the boundaries of the rule.” Federal law in the Second Circuit (which includes New York) provides a judge more flexibility than the Eleventh Circuit (which includes Florida), but it remains entirely unclear what will happen with DOJ’s pending requests. Any judge would be well supported to deny the motion to disclose the grand jury materials – and maybe that’s precisely what the administration hopes. 

Even if a judge does authorize the requested disclosure of grand jury testimony, we’re talking about a sliver of the total Epstein files. There’s no way to know with precision how much of the total files might consist of grand jury testimony, but based on my prosecutorial experience, I can safely assure you it’s a small fraction – far less than 50%; likely less even than 10%, if we had to quantify it. “All grand jury testimony” would not include, for example: phone records, bank records, flight records, diaries, texts, emails, surveillance or other videos, photographs, physical evidence, forensic reports, anything seized by law enforcement through search warrants, anything intercepted through wiretaps, or anything voluntarily turned over by witnesses or others to DOJ (to name a few).

Even within the universe of all witness statements, grand jury testimony is a small subset. It is far more common for witnesses to provide information to the feds outside of the grand jury process. Typically a witness (accompanied by a defense lawyer) will answer questions in an informal setting, which will then be memorialized in a written FBI summary called a “302.” For every witness I put in the grand jury, I spoke to dozens outside of the grand jury; yet only the former would fall within DOJ’s request. Unsurprisingly, we learned from a DOJ filing this week that only two witnesses – both law enforcement agents – actually testified in the Epstein and Maxwell grand juries.

Here’s the crux: Trump and Bondi can do whatever they want with non-grand jury information – the vast majority of the case file – yet they’ve declined thus far to produce those materials. (Though DOJ traditionally would not make public its closed investigative files in the first place; Bondi plainly doesn’t know or doesn’t care about that longstanding practice.) The administration has sought to release only grand jury information – over which they do not hold exclusive control and need a judge’s permission (which they might not get) and which, even if granted, promises to yield little of substance.    

The administration and Congress have made recent efforts to bolster the appearance of meaningful truth-seeking. The Justice Department last week sent Blanche down to Florida to meet face-to-face with Maxwell and her attorneys. But, as we considered in this space, the chances are slim that Maxwell actually becomes a legitimate cooperating witness upon whose testimony DOJ can and will bring additional prosecutions. It’s more show than actual investigation.   

Congress this week subpoenaed Maxwell to testify. Predictably (and appropriately, notwithstanding her outlandish request to see the questions in advance), she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights. Congress, in turn, responded that it “will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony.” Why, then, did Congress subpoena her in the first place – if they’re unwilling to do what’s necessary to actually get her testimony? 

Despite public declarations by Trump, Vance, Bondi, and others about their commitment to transparency, the reality is we likely won’t see anything beyond a thin, curated slice of the Epstein files unless the administration chooses to make those materials public. The decision is largely theirs alone. Yet rather than exercise that discretion, they’ve chosen instead to march down the path of maximum resistance, by seeking release of a tiny portion of the file over which they do not exercise control. Strange, isn’t it?