An annoyed President Donald Trump has asked the Justice Department (DOJ) to release “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” related to Jeffrey Epstein. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ was going to ask a federal court on Friday to unseal transcripts from Epstein’s 2019 indictment for sex trafficking.
One former FBI agent, however, told a major media outlet that people shouldn’t get too excited, because they probably won’t get any new information.
Some suspect this latest move may be little more than a ploy designed to make the Trump administration appear to be transparent without actually being so. Trump made the announcement Thursday night on his Truth Social account. His opening line — “based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein” — indicates he is trying to quell the intra-MAGA revolt triggered by the administration’s attempt to close the Epstein case before providing more information. A June 7 DOJ memo concluded that Epstein did indeed kill himself, that no list of clients who paid for sex with minors exists, and that there is no “credible evidence” that he blackmailed powerful people. For many who had followed the saga, those conclusions were simply unbelievable.
There’s no assurance that anything of significance will be released. The New York Times noted that “it was not clear that [Bondi] would succeed, because the secrecy of grand jury transcripts is highly protected.” The Washington Post echoed the sentiment:
It was not immediately clear to which records [Trump] was referring in his social media post. Federal grand jury testimony is by law confidential, and Trump said in the post that the release is “subject to court approval.” Records from a state grand jury that investigated Epstein in 2006 were released last year by a Florida judge.
Los Angeles trial attorney and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Fox News that Bondi will have to convince a judge that the need for disclosure outweighs the need for secrecy. But, in the end, he believes the judge is going to acquiesce:
In this case, Epstein is dead, so the court will consider harm to the victims in deciding whether to grant the Department of Justice’s request. There are no open criminal investigations or civil lawsuits that would typically be the basis for disclosure. DOJ officials will have to explain why the unsealing is in the public’s interest. Since the government is the party typically trying to keep the transcripts secret, and they’re taking the opposite approach here, I expect the judge to grant the request.
However, even if the judge unseals the transcripts, former FBI agent Nicole Parker said, people shouldn’t expect anything beyond what they’ve already been told:
Americans are going to be greatly underwhelmed with the release of anything Epstein-related. There is no smoking gun. And for the record, there is nothing more that this administration would love to do than to put handcuffs on anyone that’s hurting a child.
Trump’s grand jury announcement came shortly after The Wall Street Journal published a report Thursday claiming Trump gave Epstein a note with a drawing of a naked woman for the latter’s 50th birthday album back in 2003. Trump denies he did such a thing and has vowed to sue the newspaper.
Trump’s ties to Epstein are not secret. It is well known the two have met and spent time together. But there is also the prevalent belief that Trump, whatever his faults and foibles, was not “a client.” Trump is said to have broken with Epstein after he banned him from Mar-a-Lago for harassing the teenage daughter of a club member in 2007.
As part of its attempt to close the Epstein case, the DOJ released hours of supposed raw video showing the doors of the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was held when he died. The video only poured more fuel on the fire of indignation. First off, it was missing a minute. And the camera angle wasn’t even of Epstein’s direct cell door (that camera had conveniently malfunctioned that night). On Tuesday, the video saga got more interesting. Tech magazine Wired, which had previously reported that a metadata analysis showed the feds didn’t provide video that was completely original, as they had claimed, published another report, this one claiming that further analysis indicated the video was missing three minutes of footage. Wired reported:
Further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.
The next day another piece of related news broke. On Wednesday, the DOJ fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. It just so happens that Maurene Comey was involved in Epstein’s prosecution, as well as the conviction of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein was facing charges of sex trafficking minors when he died in jail in 2019. He was already a convicted sex offender by then. His death was ruled a suicide, which many, including those closest to him, have never believed. That includes his accomplice (Maxwell), his attorney Alan Dershowitz, and his brother Mark Epstein, who came down hard on FBI Director Kash Patel for such a conclusion.
As for the “client list,” Dershowitz, who said he had access to many of Epstein’s documents, said that no ledger-type list exists. However, he maintains that the government does know who the suspected clients are because the FBI gathered that information through interviews with alleged victims. Dershowitz penned an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday saying the courts have ordered those names sealed. He said they don’t include “any current officeholders,” and that the names “should be disclosed.”
The attempt by the administration to try to close the case without providing more information, especially after many in the Trump Cabinet had vowed to be transparent, has caused a massive crack in the MAGA coalition. The president is taking criticism from some of his fiercest supporters in media and in Congress.
Media dissidents include Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Benny Johnson, Candace Owens, Jack Posobiec, and others. Some responded to Trump’s calls to move on by doubling down. For instance, as a response to something Trump said earlier in the day, Posobiec titled his Thursday podcast episode “The Epstein Hoax?”
Carlson, who ripped into the president over the weekend at Kirk’s Turning Point event in Florida, put on a three-hour podcast Thursday night dedicated to Epstein. He invited researcher and long-form podcaster Darryl Cooper to break down the Epstein story. Cooper, who has produced a six-hour series on the mysterious pedophile, believes Epstein was a “freelance” spy who worked for Western and Israeli intelligence agencies and whose specialty was producing blackmail on the rich and powerful. Owens, however, portrays Epstein as a spy who was primarily loyal to Israel. Both have documented Epstein’s many connections to Israel.
As TNA noted in a March 2023 print article, one of the most solid links between Epstein and intel was via his accomplice. Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who died mysteriously after supposedly falling off a yacht. Robert Maxwell, according to several sources, was a spy. William F. Jasper made the following observations:
Epstein was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He was a supposed financier who only took clients that were billionaires, though that claim is considered complete nonsense by many familiar with finance.
He was clearly very well connected. His sources of wealth are hard to verify, and his 2008 plea deal was so astoundingly light that it only adds to the suspicions that he was operating outside the law.
Whatever Epstein was, he was likely far more than what they’re telling us. Cooper, in his talk with Carlson, may have hit the nail on the head when he said the Epstein story is really about who rules the world.