There are two independent and fatal defects in the DOJ motion that ensure it’s a head fake.

First, the motion has no chance of producing what everyone is waiting to see. At Trump’s behest, Blanche and company submitted a short filing to the Southern District of New York court overseeing Maxwell’s case, requesting the release of all “pertinent” grand jury materials. (“Pertinent” is itself a tell—the motion is hedged and lawyered; that word is not part of Trump’s normal working vocabulary.)

Crucially, the Maxwell prosecution had nothing to do with Epstein’s sleazy friends or alleged clients. That’s not how the indictment was structured. The SDNY team, led by Maurene Comey (Jim Comey’s daughter, whom Bondi fired last week), brought the case more than a decade after the Wall Street Journal reported the DOJ had reviewed the Epstein materials. Their clear focus was Maxwell and Epstein himself.

The supporting players in the indictment were Epstein’s associates, led by Maxwell, who helped him locate, groom, and abuse young girls—along with the victims themselves. The charge required only that some commercial sex act was contemplated or intended. The sex acts referenced in the indictment involved Epstein alone.

What Comey successfully moved to keep under seal were the grand jury materials that might be needed if the government were to bring a new case against Maxwell—either the one count on which she wasn’t convicted or in the (highly unlikely) event her convictions are reversed on appeal.

That’s why the grand jury materials Trump now says he wants disclosed are completely unrelated to the information about Epstein’s circle that MAGA is clamoring for—starting with the infamous 50th birthday notebook and Trump’s own ribald contribution.

Ah yes, the notebook—the term that has become shorthand for the real object of public fascination. According to the Wall Street Journal, DOJ officials reviewed a small, handwritten book allegedly recovered during the FBI’s 2006 investigation into Epstein—three years before his sweetheart plea deal in Florida.

That probe, which ran from 2003 to 2006, generated a reported 300 gigabytes of material—equivalent to approximately 150 million pages.

There is likely additional material related to Trump in that vast trove. We know, for example, that he flew on Epstein’s private plane at least seven times.

That’s not to say there is any information tying him to the actual sex trafficking.

Which is exactly what makes it so strange—and so ill-advised—that Trump has opted to go all in on a claim that is near certain to collapse: that the Wall Street Journal fabricated the story about the birthday letter. (My Substack from yesterday deals at length with the misguidedness of that suit.)

The material MAGA is clamoring for—names, logs, financial records, and whatever “wonderful secrets” (as Trump put it in the sign-off to his letter) Epstein’s trove might contain—is not part of the Maxwell grand jury file.

The motion poses no prospect of giving the chunk of Trump’s base deeply concerned about Epstein’s conduct what it is demanding.

More cynically still, Trump has structured things so he can claim he did his best—but that the court simply wouldn’t let him satisfy the MAGA faithful. His stance of leaving it all up to the court’s decision is a bad joke, given that he has treated the judiciary with more contempt and defiance than any president in history.

In fact, this is part of a broader strategy: appear to want the court to grant the motion while actually expecting—and being perfectly content with—the opposite. If the court rejects the request, Trump can throw up his hands and tell the base, “See? I tried.”

That leads to the second obvious problem with the Trump/Bondi gambit.

Even if the SDNY court were inclined to entertain the motion—which it almost certainly is not—Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure presents an imposing barrier.

Rule 6(e) governs the secrecy of grand jury materials. It strongly disfavors unsealing and provides six narrow exceptions for when disclosure is allowed. None of them includes “public interest,” “public outcry,” or “political meltdown.” You can’t pierce grand jury secrecy just because the public is in a frenzy or a president is under fire.

In its filing, DOJ cites a single case in which a court hinted the six exceptions might not be exhaustive. But that case involved a matter of keen historical interest—and the court expressly distinguished that from political or public interest of the sort DOJ now appeals to. Even then, the court declined to unseal the materials based on the extra-statutory argument.

In sum, DOJ’s precedent provides scant basis for unsealing the grand jury record—and the rules themselves provide none.

And that, of course, is the point. Trump and his team know the motion is a loser. They know it won’t result in disclosures. They’re counting on that.

The goal isn’t to win—it’s to pretend to try. Trump wants to tell his base he pulled every lever to get to the bottom of the Epstein affair, only to be thwarted by the Deep State, the Swamp, the corrupt judiciary, or whichever villain suits this week’s narrative.

The problem? MAGA isn’t demanding transparency in the Maxwell prosecution. They want names. They want proof of the global pedophilia ring they believe was run by Epstein and his powerful friends. They want the notebook. None of that is in the SDNY grand jury file.

This is Trump’s gambit in a nutshell: pretend DOJ is declassifying the “good stuff,” knowing it isn’t; wait for judicial rejection; and reframe himself as the truth-teller blocked by the forces of darkness.

Then, when the well-intended gesture fails, Trump can pivot: “I tried. Enough is enough. Now let’s move on.”

It’s a flimsy con from a lifelong con artist. And given the intensity of MAGA’s obsession with Epstein’s secrets, it’s unlikely to do anything to stem the escalating furor.

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of the Talking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing to Talking Feds on Substack.