A federal judge slammed the Trump administration Tuesday for “misleading” both victims of Jeffrey Epstein and the American public in what some critics have called a ploy of distraction.
New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer approved Tuesday the Justice Department’s request to unseal the court records of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking victims for Epstein. In his ruling, however, Engelmayer torched the DOJ’s request as an act of deception.
“DOJ, although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims, has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” Engelmayer wrote, The Independent reported Tuesday.
“The motion itself misled victims – and the public at large – in holding out the Maxwell grand jury materials as essential to the goal of ‘transparency to the American public,’ when in fact the grand jury materials would not add to public knowledge.”
Trump has been plagued by his past ties with Epstein during his second term in office, starting with the bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal in July that revealed Trump has sent Epstein a bawdy letter for his 50th birthday.
Trump continued to face more scrutiny as additional details about his relationship with Epstein continued to be revealed, including emails that suggested he may have “spent hours” with an Epstein victim at Epstein’s home, or that he may have spent Thanksgiving with Epstein during his first presidency.
The mounting pressure culminated after a legislative effort to compel the DOJ to release all of its files on Epstein succeeded last month, giving the Trump administration until Dec. 19 to release all files to the public, and in a searchable form.
Trump, however, has personally pursued a different path to quell critics, one he first proposed back in July: demand the courts to release grand jury testimony in both Epstein and Maxwell’s trials. That effort has been criticized as a ploy to distract from the DOJ’s trove of files on Epstein, with critics arguing that the grand jury testimony wouldn’t contain worthwhile information that would satisfy the public.
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