It took an act of Congress to compel the release of details about the sex crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. A Virgin Islands judge was weighing this week whether to make grand jury records and other yet-unreleased evidence public.
The information given to a grand jury is usually kept secret and is likely outside the scope of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, made law in November 2025, argued attorneys representing the Epstein estate. The estate has sought to keep the files private, saying their release may unfairly expose victims and people not accused of any crime to “undue harassment.”
Attorneys for two news organizations seeking the files’ full release told Superior Court Judge Simone Van Holten-Turnbull Monday to have the court blackout the names of victims. Allowing public inspection of the redacted files both met the needs of society — exposing the reach of Epstein’s influence — and demonstrate the court’s power to protect victims through redaction.
“In releasing files relevant to the Epstein investigations and prosecutions, the Department of Justice and three federal courts have shown that redaction is the most appropriate mechanism for both protecting privacy and honoring the public’s right of access to judicial documents,” St. Croix attorney Kevin Rames wrote to the judge in documents published Tuesday.
Innocent third parties in the Epstein documents would be at no different risk of public scrutiny than people and businesses in other court documents released to the public, Rames said.
“If they did nothing more than engage in innocent and routine business transactions with Mr. Epstein, that will be apparent from the documents themselves. They stand in no different place than all the third-party witnesses and others who are routinely identified when they become involved in high-profile court proceedings,” Rames wrote on behalf of his clients, The New York Times Company and The McClatchy Company, publishers of the Miami Herald.
Holton-Turnbull had ruled against releasing the files in September — before the passage of the Transparency Act — saying the risk to victims and innocent third parties was too great.
In October, Southern District of New York Senior Judge Jed Rakoff ordered the unsealing of documents from the Virgin Islands’ suit against JPMorgan Chase. The release came after The New York Times and Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, requested access to 158 exhibits that the territory submitted in 2023, believed to contain, among other things, financial statements for accounts belonging to Epstein or his victims.
Epstein, a Virgin Islands EDC beneficiary, owned and lived on Little St. James Island between St. Thomas and St. John. He spent decades cultivating relationships with influential public figures in the Virgin Islands and abroad.
