Pam Bondi’s Epstein grand jury artifice

To a big fanfare, the American prosecutor General Pam Bondi asked the federal courts in New York and in Florida to unscrew on the transcriptions of the great jury “associated with the” accusation of Jeffrey Epstein and his partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Bondi claims that the public should have these transcriptions in the interest of “transparency” to promote “the public interest in the investigation carried out by the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation”.

This justification is a big simulation designed to distract the public of the DoJ and the FBI investigation files and a Florida judge has already said no. But even if the transcriptions of the great jury have been published, it is very unlikely that they provide the public with new important facts.

I know that, as a special deputy prosecutor of Watergate and American assistant lawyer for Manhattan, I carried out hundreds of Grand Jury procedures and I am familiar with the process.

To start, the entire investigation file created by the DoJ and the FBI is rarely never presented to the Grand Jury. The FBI provides the report on the results of its survey with summaries of interviews to assistant lawyers in the United States. They decide if there is sufficient evidence to present a large jury to request an indictment which can lead to a condemnation of the jury.

Based on the FBI report, the prosecutor can conduct a more in -depth investigation, such as the assignment of new documents and the interviews of witnesses interviewed by the FBI and others not questioned by the FBI. The prosecutor may or may not provide the results of this investigation to the Grand Jury. If the court publishes the transcriptions, these investigation notes and the memorandums will remain in the files of the office of the American prosecutor.

The prosecutor decides what evidence to present to the great jury, in particular who testifies. Although evidence can reveal several criminal players, the government has no obligation to present all the incriminating evidence available to the Grand Jury. There were perhaps many other associates with Epstein and Maxwell who violated federal criminal law. However, the major juries which made the accusation acts on Epstein and Maxwell were probably focused solely on these two individuals.

As such, prosecutors shape and limit proof that the Grand Jury considers. For example, the prosecutor generally does not ask the key witnesses to refer to the great jury everything they know about the question. The prosecutor is normally prudent to ensure that the witness restricts the testimony of key points supporting the accusations, without exposing the additional details and context that the prosecutor could subsequently arouse at the trial.

The prosecutor takes specific measures to the Grand Jury to protect himself against the defense lawyers at the trial to attack the credibility of the witnesses when the witness testifies to facts at the trial which were not linked to the Grand Jury. The prosecutor regularly concludes a testimony to the great jury of a key witness by asking the witness if he testified to everything that is to his knowledge of the facts of the case. The witness confirms that he did not do it. This sets up the witness to provide more details later at the trial without fear that the defense contravened the witness for having omitted facts to the Grand Jury.

Thus, whatever the testimony of the Grand Jury, may not reflect the full knowledge of Epstein’s misdeeds.

The prosecutor is also not obliged to present to the Grand Jury each incriminating document discovered in the investigation. For example, the book linked to the leather reported by the Wall Street Journal with the letter “Bawdy” from Donald Trump to Epstein for his 50th anniversary was probably not shown to the Grand Jury. This means that prosecutors may have watched it during their investigation or that the book is in DoJ or FBI files. The same goes for the list of Epstein customers who was supposed to “sit” on Bondi’s desk to “examine”.

Not all transcriptions do not reveal what is in Epstein Doj or FBI “files”, its list of customers, personal documents and financial files collected in the survey or complete identity of its co-conspirators in addition to Maxwell.

In short, the MEO’s motions to release the transcriptions of the great jury are nothing more than a distraction and a continuation of Epstein’s coverage, which Bondi recognizes is “the most infamous pedophile in American history”. Indeed, these requests will be equivalent to pure grandiose if the courts refuse to disclose transcriptions in accordance with the well established law protecting the secret of the great jury.

Akerman was previously an assistant special prosecutor of Watergate and American assistant lawyer for the South New York district.