WASHINGTON — In a move that was expected to quell rising suspicion, the US Justice Department under President Donald Trump’s administration has petitioned a federal court to unseal limited grand jury transcripts related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Yet far from silencing critics, the effort appears to have ignited deeper fractures within Trump’s political base, fueling allegations of deception, secrecy, and political expediency at the heart of the so-called “Epstein Files.”
The legal action filed late Friday seeks the release of specific transcripts from a 2002 grand jury investigation in Florida, in what officials described as a gesture toward transparency. But the narrow scope of the request — excluding broader investigative files, FBI memos, victim testimony, and sealed prosecutorial agreements — has sparked fierce backlash from right-wing influencers and conspiracy-driven voices who have long championed the Epstein scandal as a symbol of elite corruption.
Adding to the uproar, Trump’s team also filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for its July exposé that published excerpts of what the paper claimed was a 2003 birthday letter from Trump to Epstein. The letter, allegedly signed in gold ink, read like the kind of personal note that MAGA supporters had long denied ever existed. Trump denies ever writing the letter, calling the Journal’s report “malicious fiction,” while critics on both sides of the political spectrum remain unconvinced.
“This selective unsealing is nothing more than an insult to the public’s intelligence,” said one conservative media personality, formerly a staunch Trump ally. “They’re trying to toss scraps while burying the meat.” The lack of broader document declassification, including Trump-era DOJ briefings and internal memos concerning Epstein’s network, has led to claims of deliberate obfuscation and has rattled Trump’s post-impeachment comeback strategy.
Notably, the backlash is not confined to social media echo chambers. Conservative legal analysts and former Trump DOJ staffers have warned that grand jury files, even if unsealed, are unlikely to provide bombshells due to their procedural and sanitized nature. “These transcripts will be boring agent summaries at best,” one former prosecutor told The Eastern Herald. “Whatever Trump’s base thinks is in there — it’s not.”
Even as the Department of Justice insists it is balancing victim protection and public interest, the move is seen as a political calculation that has now backfired. MAGA influencers are openly accusing the Trump campaign of betrayal, further complicating his 2026 midterm narrative and reopening the very Trump Epstein scandal he once seemed politically immune to.
According to the Associated Press, the Justice Department’s filing emphasized that the limited unsealing effort does not include internal investigative material or broader intelligence documents due to confidentiality constraints surrounding victims and national security considerations.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the request Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.” Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment but “it’s not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.”
“People want the entire file from however long. That’s just not what this is,” he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages.
