A V.I. Superior Court judge has denied a third request by two media companies to unseal reports filed in Jeffrey Epstein’s probate case, saying that the privacy interests of third parties outweigh the public’s right to access “this highly sensitive information” under the First Amendment or common law.
Additionally, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, enacted by Congress on Nov. 19, applies only to materials in the possession of the U.S. Justice Department and not the estate’s Special Master’s reports, Magistrate Judge Simone Van Holten-Turnbull said in her seven-page order issued Jan. 29.
In a letter dated Jan. 27, The New York Times Company and The McClatchy Company, publisher of the Miami Herald, had asked Van Holten-Turnbull to reconsider her orders of Sept. 23 and Oct. 3 denying access to the reports.
The Epstein estate opposed their release, stating the news organizations offered no good reason for the court to revoke its prior orders.
While the Times and McClatchy cited the recent passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and subsequent actions taken by the U.S. Justice Department and three federal courts in compliance with that act, federal statute and its application by those courts does not require the V.I. Superior Court to reverse itself, the estate argued.
“The Act simply requires the United States Attorney General to make publicly available those materials relating to Jeffrey Epstein that are ‘in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices,’” it said.
“[H]ere the Court-sealed Reports are not, and have never been, in the DOJ’s possession. To unseal that material on the basis of the Act would ignore its plain language,” the estate’s attorney Christopher Allen Kroblin wrote.
Moreover, public interest in Epstein has only increased since the media outlets’ initial request for the files last August, he said. “And so has the potential for undue harassment to third parties identified in the Reports,” including minors who were sexually abused.
In their letter to the judge, the media outlets said the estate misconstrued their argument and failed to address their most critical point: redaction can adequately protect the privacy interests at issue.
“The Estate sets up a strawman argument when it notes that the Epstein Files Transparency Act … does not apply to these files. The News Organizations never said otherwise. Instead, we directed the Court to the Act and the court decisions applying the Act to Epstein court files in order to demonstrate the heightened public interest in the activities of Mr. Epstein and the capacity of the courts, including this one, to safeguard the relevant privacy interests without resorting to blanket sealing,” they said.
Additionally, the suggestion that the activities of Congress in regard to Epstein “have nothing to do with this case is belied by the fact that the Estate’s executors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, were subpoenaed to testify by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform” on Jan. 23.
Moreover, the estate “has nothing to say as to why redaction cannot be employed here. Instead, it repeats the concerns about ‘innocent third parties’ that were raised by the Court in its initial decision,” their attorney Kevin Rames wrote.
“There is no dispute that Mr. Epstein’s victims should not be identified in a release of documents and that their names should be redacted,” the letter stated. “But the Estate is wrong to assume that businesses or individuals who conducted business with Mr. Epstein would be subject to ‘undue harassment’ if documents identifying them are released. 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.”
However, Van Holten-Turnbull disagreed.
“This Court maintains, as it has emphasized in its previous orders, that the privacy interests of third parties outweigh the public’s right to access this highly sensitive information under the First Amendment or common law,” she wrote in her order.
Nor is the court legally required to unseal the reports, the judge said. The Epstein Files Transparency Act is limited to the federal government, and the estate’s sealed Special Master’s reports are not judicial documents to which the public is entitled access, she said.
Even if it was determined that the federal act applied to the sealed reports, or that the probate documents are judicial documents, “this Court will continue to use its discretionary authority to keep the Reports sealed,” Van Holten-Turnbull said.
The judge also rejected the argument that sensitive information could be redacted, noting that redacted files released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act were able to be unredacted and were subsequently circulated on social media.
She was referring to digital redactions by the U.S. Justice Department that were improperly applied to Epstein files it released in late 2025, making it simple to reveal the text underneath.
“Here, the information contained in the Reports the News Organizations argue can be redacted, the names and identifying information of third parties and potential victims of sexual abuse, many of whom were minors, is too sensitive to be released to the public given the public’s demonstrated ability to remove redactions,” Van Holten-Turnbull wrote in her order.
It is necessary to balance the need for public knowledge with the real potential that releasing information that supports this desire could both retraumatize victims and cause them and third parties excessive humiliation, she said in denying the release of the reports.
A registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in Florida in 2008, Epstein died by apparent suicide in August 2019 at age 66 while in detention in New York on federal trafficking charges. His primary residence was Little St. James, his private island off St. Thomas, where for years he ran a complex web of shell companies registered in the USVI that enabled his crimes.
Interest in his case has only deepened since President Donald Trump was elected for a second term, having run on the promise of releasing classified files on UFOs, the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Epstein case.
