The grand jury secrecy rule is enforced in the Sunshine State. Meantime, we await a ruling from the federal court in Manhattan.

Reasoning that the rule of grand jury secrecy means what it says, a federal judge in Florida yesterday denied the Trump Justice Department’s request that she unseal grand jury minutes pertaining to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation — presumably, the probe centered in Palm Beach back in the early 2000s, as opposed to the prosecution run by Manhattan federal prosecutors that resulted in Epstein’s 2019 indictment (after which he committed suicide while in federal custody, according to investigators).

The New York Times reports that Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, an Obama appointee in the Southern District of Florida (SDFla), said her “hands are tied” by Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. I explained the rule and its narrow exceptions last week, additionally addressing the suggestion — on which courts around the country differ — that judges have some modicum of “supervisory authority” to allow disclosure outside the rule’s terms. All agree that, if there is such authority, it is reserved for truly extraordinary circumstances. More to the point, there is no exception geared toward satisfying public curiosity about a controversial case or person.

Judge Rosenberg also rebuffed the Trump DOJ’s suggestion that she transfer the matter to the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, where the grand jury disclosure issue is also being litigated at the government’s request (there doesn’t appear to have been a ruling in the SDNY yet). There is an exception to Rule 6(e) that allows disclosure for purposes of assisting other judicial proceedings. But Rosenberg observed that the government isn’t trying to assist a litigation in the SDNY; it is trying to move the SDFla grand jury materials to the SDNY in hopes of finding a judge there who will disclose them outside the parameters of the secrecy rule.

It’s not clear to me whether the Trump administration will appeal. The judge’s twelve-page ruling is not publicly available yet because cases relating to grand jury matters are presumptively sealed. Rosenberg said she would have a public case opened to make available for review the legal pleadings and her ruling, but not the grand jury testimony and exhibits themselves.