Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation to release long-sealed state grand jury records of an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
DeSantis signed the bill at a news conference in Palm Beach Thursday and was accompanied by two of Epstein's victims.
"This is long overdue but again, we feel that we can't just turn a blind eye," DeSantis said. "What happened was clearly wrong, and the punishment was simply wholly inadequate to the crime."
Under the bill, HB 117, the transcripts of a 2006 grand jury that investigated Epstein's sexual assaults of underage girls will be released to the public.
Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months in the Palm Beach County jail system, followed by 12 months of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender.
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"A lot of people tend to forget but this is not something we should be forgetting about, this is not something to be sweeping under the rug," Epstein victim Haley Robson said at the news conference with DeSantis. "A lot of us are still in therapy, we're still trying to survive."
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The bill was unanimously passed by the Legislature, will take effect July 1, although a South Florida circuit judge might release the transcripts sooner as part of a lawsuit filed by the Palm Beach Post.
The Post sued the Palm Beach County state attorney and the court clerk in 2019 to obtain a court order to unseal the grand jury proceedings and reveal why the grand jury returned only minimal charges.
A circuit judge determined in 2021 that the court didn’t have the authority under state law to release the records. A state appeals court disagreed last year, citing a state law that says grand jury records can be made public if that is a “furtherance of justice.” The appeals court ordered the lower court to review, redact and release the material, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The new bill adds that records can be released if subject of the grand jury inquiry is dead or the investigation is related to sexual activity with a minor.
Palm Beach County Court Clerk Joseph Abruzzo was technically a defendant in the Post’s lawsuit as his office holds the records, but he hasn’t fought the appeals court ruling and has previously indicated a desire to release the records in the interest of full transparency. Barry Krischer, who was the state attorney for Palm Beach County during Epstein’s grand jury inquiry, retired in 2009.
Epstein was 66 when he killed himself in a New York City federal jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Federal prosecutors had accused him of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars for massages at his homes in Florida and New York, where he then molested them.
"What was going on in Florida was only a fraction of what was happening," DeSantis said. "This was a massive, massive operation here that was targeting these very, very young girls and to not have justice on this is something that has been a big black spot on our justice system."
Florida’s treatment of Epstein came under scrutiny in 2018 following a series of Miami Herald articles. They detailed the disagreements that surfaced beginning in 2005 among law enforcement officials after teenage girls and young women told Palm Beach police investigators that Epstein had sexually assaulted them. They had agreed to give him massages while semi-nude or fully nude in exchange for money, but they said he would then molest them without their consent.
Palm Beach police, meanwhile, took their evidence to federal prosecutors, who threatened to bring charges until the agreement was reached in June 2008.
While in Palm Beach sheriff’s custody, Epstein was allowed to stay in an isolated cell at the county’s minimum-security stockade, where he roamed freely and watched television. State investigators said in a 2021 report that isolating him was a prudent decision, saying it was made to protect Epstein from other inmates and to prevent him from using his wealth to become “king of the dorms.”
Epstein was also soon allowed into the county’s work-release program. During that time, he was taken to his office, where he claimed to be running his financial consulting business and his foundation. By the time of his release, he was spending six days a week and 18 hours a day at his office. He was required to wear an ankle monitor and hire two deputies to oversee his whereabouts from the lobby, but they were not in his office with him.
A woman who was then 17 and another woman, who was then an adult, have said they were trafficked to Epstein’s office during that time to have paid sex with him.
Epstein’s former girlfriend, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 of luring girls to his homes to be molested.
"We have had no closure whatsoever on what has happened with these crimes. Epstein was charged for his crimes in 2006 and we are finally going to learn why," Epstein accused Jena-Lisa Jones said at the Thursday news conference with DeSantis. "We have been left in the dark for so long with no answers to what is going on and why things played out the way that they did."
