Legal cases could prise open Epstein cache despite Trump's blocking effort [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 3 Aug 2025 08.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 3 Aug 2025 08.01 EDT


On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed that his administration would release a tranche of documents in the criminal investigation into disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein. But since Trump returned to the White House, his promises have fallen flat, with few documents released – and backtracking about releasing more records.

The lack of disclosure has prompted not only dissatisfaction among those seeking information about Epstein’s crimes, but political flak Trump can’t seem to deflect, especially about his own relations with the convicted sex trafficker. But where political pressures have so far failed, legal pressures that have largely sailed under the radar of the fierce debate about Epstein’s crimes could yet succeed and bring crucial information in the public eye.

Several court cases provide some hope that even if Trump’s justice department fails to make good on calls for transparency, potentially revelatory records about Epstein, his crimes and his links to some of the most powerful people in the US might still see the light of day. Moreover, it is possible that the justice department’s unusual request to unseal grand jury transcripts, in Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal cases, could also undermine opposition to it releasing records.

One lawsuit brought by the news website Radar Online and investigative journalist James Robertson stems from their April 2017 public records request for documents related to the FBI’s investigation of Epstein. This request came years after Epstein pleaded guilty to state-level crimes in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution – and before his 2019 arrest on child sex-trafficking charges in New York federal court. Radar and Robertson filed suit in May 2017 after the FBI did not respond to their request; the agency ultimately agreed that it would process documents at a rate of 500 pages per month, per court documents.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/trump-epstein-legal-cases