U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to the media, after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to the power of federal judges by restricting their ability to grant broad legal relief in cases as the justices acted in a legal fight over President Donald Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington D.C., June 27, 2025.

The Department of Justice on Friday asked federal judges to unseal grand jury transcripts in the criminal cases of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted procurer of young girls, Ghislaine Maxwell.

The formal requests came one day after President Donald Trump said he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.”

Trump suggested he was taking that step in order to tamp down on the growing pressure from his own supporters to release the so-called Epstein files. “This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” he wrote in a Truth Social post at the time.

Less than two weeks earlier, the Justice Department said in a memo that it would not disclose any more information related to Epstein’s federal sex trafficking case after conducting an “exhaustive review.”

But since then, “there has been extensive public interest in the basis for the Memorandum’s conclusions,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in separate court filings in the Epstein and Maxwell cases in Manhattan federal court.

“While the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation continue to adhere to the conclusions reached in the Memorandum, transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration,” Blanche wrote.