MIAMI — A Florida Judge denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to unseal federal grand jury transcripts from the Southern District of Florida’s original 2007 federal investigation into the crimes of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The decision comes as President Donald Trump is facing renewed scrutiny over his friendship with Epstein, the late New York financier widely known for running an international network that sexually exploited girls and young women for more than two decades. Trump’s name has appeared on Epstein’s phone logs, Epstein’s plane passenger lists and in Epstein’s phone directories, along with the names of other influential and wealthy people.

All of those records have long been part of the FBI’s investigative files.

There’s not been any evidence that Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes.

The request to unseal records from the Florida federal investigation came as the Trump administration responds to a growing backlash for its refusal to release the government’s voluminous files on Epstein — months after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised full transparency on the files.

But on July 7, the DOJ abruptly announced that it had conducted an “exhaustive review” of the files, concluding there was no “credible evidence” that Epstein kept a client list and that the review didn’t uncover evidence that others were involved in Epstein’s crimes.

To fend off the public outcry, the DOJ filed motions last week requesting the limited release of any federal grand jury testimony — both in Epstein’s 2005 to 2007 case in Florida and in the 2019 to 2020 cases brought in New York.

But Robin L. Rosenberg, U.S. District Court judge of the Southern District of Florida, on Wednesday declined the government’s request, noting that “the Court’s hands are tied” by the rules of grand jury secrecy — and that the government had failed to prove that the release of the material was necessary to address the intense public interest in the case.

The DOJ’s request concerned grand jury testimony that was part of a federal criminal probe into Epstein in 2005 and 2007 in Florida. There was also a separate 2006 Florida state grand jury probe into Epstein; those files were unsealed a year ago after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill allowing their release.

But Rosenberg stood firm that the federal grand jury records are to remain sealed by law. She also denied the government’s effort to transfer any court proceedings about the records to the Southern District of New York, where the government filed a parallel request to unseal grand jury testimony related to Epstein’s 2019 arrest on sex charges.

The government’s New York request is still pending.

The Florida federal investigation into Epstein never led to a grand jury indictment because Epstein’s lawyers negotiated a non-prosecution agreement that allowed the financier to escape federal charges by pleading guilty to minor charges in state court. It’s not known how much, if any, testimony was conducted in front of a federal grand jury in 2005 and 2007.

However, in 2019, following a Miami Herald investigation, Perversion of Justice, the DOJ opened a new case against Epstein. A federal grand jury issued an indictment against him; and the following year, another grand jury indicted his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, on sex trafficking charges. Epstein was found hanging in his New York jail cell in August 2019 while he was awaiting trial.

Maxwell is now serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Tuesday that he intended to meet with Maxwell to find out what she knows. Maxwell is appealing her conviction.

“Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” Blanche wrote on social media, adding that “no lead is off limits.”

It’s long been publicly known that Trump was friends with Epstein. Plane flight logs from Epstein’s pilots, as well as a “black book” phone directory of his friends, contained Trump’s name many times. Trump’s name is also among hundreds of others on copies of phone messages police seized from Epstein’s Palm Beach home in 2005.

Epstein’s other high-profile friends also included former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Victoria Secret owner Les Wexner, billionaire Leon Black, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, American banker James “Jes” Staley, magician David Copperfield, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others.

Bondi indicated in an interview on Fox News that she had a copy of the so-called “Epstein List” on her desk, seemingly giving credence to the existence of a list detailing which of Epstein’s friends had participated in his sex abuse of hundreds of girls, which has been the subject of conspiracy theories for years. Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide, has also been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons has acknowledged many failings in its handling of Epstein’s custody, but the government has maintained that Epstein’s cause of death was suicide.

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