On a new episode of the Insider podcast, Preet Bharara and Joyce Vance discuss:
– President Donald Trump’s push to unseal grand jury testimony from the Jeffrey Epstein case following weeks of backlash from Trump’s supporters;
– Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over a report on Epstein’s birthday letters, including one reportedly bearing Trump’s signature; and
– The firing of SDNY prosecutor Maurene Comey, who handled the Epstein prosecution.
A NOTE FROM THE PRODUCER
is a lawyer and Supervising Producer at Stay Tuned with Preet.
Is President Trump’s push to unseal grand jury materials from the Jeffrey Epstein case about transparency or optics?
Late last week, President Donald Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of grand jury testimony from the Epstein case following weeks of backlash from his supporters. In a petition to federal court in New York, Bondi argued that “historical interest” in the Epstein case outweighed the need to keep the grand jury materials private. Bondi wrote: “Public officials, lawmakers, pundits, and ordinary citizens remain deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter…After all, Jeffrey Epstein is ‘the most infamous pedophile in American history.’”
But as Preet and Joyce explain on a new episode of the Insider podcast, Bondi’s motion is on shaky legal ground. Under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, grand jury materials are presumed secret, and Bondi’s filing doesn’t fit any of the recognized exceptions, which she implicitly admits in her motion.
Preet and Joyce suggest this effort might be more about creating the appearance of action in response to political pressure rather than genuine transparency or securing justice for Epstein’s victims.
Joyce: “It’s a legitimate motion to file in the sense that it’s not entirely frivolous. They just want somebody else to blame, and Donald Trump loves to blame federal judges. ‘I wanted to show it to you, but I can’t because that damn judge said I couldn’t.’…It’s the intersection of law and politics. We’re straight up at the corner.”
Also, what is the “what goes around comes around” principle of constitutional law? The Trump administration may be setting this Article II precedent. Listen to find out.
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Stay Informed,
Jake
