A federal judge said he would not unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein – rejecting the Justice Department’s request to make them public.
Judge Richard Berman said the Justice Department did not overcome long-standing precedent to keep grand jury materials sealed and noted that the information contained in the sealed materials is small relative to the entire investigation file already in DOJ’s hands.
“The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation information and materials in the hand of the Department of Justice,” the judge wrote.
The Justice Department declined to comment on Berman’s ruling. This is the third federal judge to decline to release Epstein-related transcripts and evidence from a grand jury.
The ruling comes as the Trump administration has faced mounting pressure to release more information around the Epstein files, especially after senior officials promised to do so.
“The Government is a logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files. By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a ‘diversion’ from the breath and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession,” Berman wrote Wednesday.
The judge added another compelling reason to keep the records sealed are “possible threats to victims’ safety and privacy.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi released binders to right-wing social media influencers at the White House in February, but many of the influencers shared that the binders did not reveal any new information regarding the Epstein files.
The Justice Department started revoking their promises to release more information in Epstein’s case in May and downplaying the situation. Bondi alerted Trump in May that his name appeared in the files.
On July 7, the DOJ released an unsigned memo saying they would not be releasing any more documents regarding the Epstein files. The lack of transparency in the memo only angered Democrats, the public and even members of Trump’s political base.
The Justice Department has explored several avenues to have more information released, including by asking two federal judges in New York to unseal grand jury materials in Epstein’s case and Ghislaine Maxwell’s case. Maxwell is Epstein’s long-time partner who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for carrying out a years-long scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
New York federal Judge Paul Engelmayer denied the Justice Department’s request for grand jury materials in Maxwell’s case on August 11 in a scathing opinion, saying that the premise of DOJ’s argument was false and that the request was not a matter of public interest.
The Justice Department also requested the unsealing of grand jury materials from a federal court in Florida, and a judge swiftly denied the request.
Additionally, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted a two-day interview with Maxwell on July 24 and 25 at the US Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee, Florida. The Justice Department is working on transcribing a 10-hour audio tape from the interview.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Taylor Swift has agreed to sit for a deposition in the ongoing legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, according to a court filing from Baldoni’s camp.
Swift is likely to be asked about any discussions she had with Lively about conditions on the set of “It Ends With Us.” Baldoni’s team previously got court permission to obtain messages between Lively and Swift, after Lively’s team tried unsuccessfully to exclude Swift from the case.
The two sides are nearing completion of discovery in the high-profile case. Lively has sued Baldoni, her director and co-star, for sexual harassment and retaliation, alleging that he and the film’s producers and publicists launched an online smear campaign against her to punish her for raising complaints. A trial is scheduled for next spring in federal court in New York.
Lively has already been deposed. Her team has yet to take depositions of Baldoni or co-defendants Steven Sarowitz and Jamey Heath. In a motion on Thursday, her lawyers asked for an extension of the deadline to take depositions from Sept. 30 to Oct. 10, stating that the Baldoni team has dragged its feet in producing requested documents.
Lively’s lawyers also stated that they expect Baldoni’s team to ask for a 30-day extension for all discovery.
In a response on Thursday, Baldoni’s side said that is not true, and that they are asking for an extension only so that they can take Swift’s deposition during the week of Oct. 20-25, “due to Ms. Swift’s preexisting professional obligations.”
Baldoni’s side asked the court to extend the deadline solely for the “purpose of accommodating third-party witness Taylor Swift who has agreed to appear for deposition but is unable to do so before October 20, 2025.”
Lively’s team opposed that request on Friday, arguing that Baldoni’s team had failed to take steps to schedule Swift’s deposition prior to this week. Lively’s lawyers also questioned how Swift’s testimony would be relevant to the case.
Baldoni’s lawyers likewise opposed Lively’s request for a blanket extension of the deadline. The two sides previously reached an agreement to hold Baldoni’s deposition on Sept. 21-22, Sarowitz’s on Sept. 15, and Heath’s on Sept. 18-19. Lively’s team argues that Baldoni’s lawyers are defying a court order to turn over Signal messages promptly.
Lively’s team has argued that Baldoni’s side has repeatedly dragged Swift into the case in order to attract media attention. Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s lead attorney, previously alleged that he had heard that Lively was seeking to pressure Swift to issue a statement of support, and that Lively had urged Swift to delete their communications. The judge struck that allegation from the court record.
Baldoni’s team also previously subpoenaed Swift for communications, though that subpoena was later withdrawn.
The group of football-loving would-be assassins abandoned their task at the last minute.
“I’m close to the position. Are you going to cancel the game?” the person codenamed Austria asked their associates on their Signal group at just before 9pm on 15 December 2022, as he lurked near Moraes’s home in Brazil’s capital, Brasília.
“Abort,” replied “Germany”, according to a federal police report.
The cinematic plot, nicknamed Operation Copa 2022 (Operation World Cup 2022) and involving at least six special forces troops, was at the heart of this week’s historic trial of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. He was on Thursday sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election to his leftwing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula.
“[He tried to] annihilate the essential pillars of the democratic rule-of-law state,” said Moraes as he accused Bolsonaro of being the leader of a sprawling conspiracy, which included plans to assassinate Lula and the vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, to stop them taking power on 1 January 2023.
Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters at a protest this month. Photograph: Luis Nova/AP
Moraes said hitmen had planned to “neutralise” him using “extremely powerful weapons” capable of piercing his bullet-proof car; they also allegedly considered killing Lula during a public event with poison or drugs that would cause organ failure.
“I’m someone who should be really thankful to be alive,” Lula said last year after the alleged poison plot was revealed.
Bolsonaro has denied engineering a coup or being involved in an assassination plot, calling such claims “a little story”.
But Moraes said there was “ample evidence” indicating the far-right politician was aware of Operation World Cup 2022, which the judge said was part of a larger intrigue called Green and Yellow Dagger.
Police investigators said a copy of the blueprint for a “clandestine operation” with “terrorist hallmarks” was printed out in the presidential palace on 6 December 2022 by an army general called Mário Fernandes. At the time Gen Fernandes, who was arrested last year, was a senior official in Bolsonaro’s administration.
“This [plan] wasn’t printed out in a cave. It wasn’t printed out hidden away in a room of terrorists. It was printed out in the presidential palace. It was printed out in the seat of the Brazilian government … at the same moment that president Jair Messias Bolsonaro was there,” Moraes told the court on Tuesday as Bolsonaro’s trial reached its conclusion.
Alexandre de Moraes and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said he was ‘someone who should be really thankful to be alive’. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
“The planning is so detailed that it even details the chances of success, what the collateral damage might be, what weaponry should be used,” added Moraes.
A copy of the Green and Yellow Dagger plan, obtained by federal police investigators, suggests plotters planned to use an arsenal that included assault rifles, a belt-fed machine gun and even a Swedish anti-tank weapon, used on the battlefield in Ukraine. “These are weapons of war commonly used by combat groups,” the police report says.
According to the investigators, the plan to assassinate Moraes was aborted only because a court session was delayed – and, more importantly, the commanders of the army and air force refused to endorse Bolsonaro’s coup plot.
Brazil has had more than a dozen coup attempts since it became a republic in 1889 but none, so far as is known, involved a plan to assassinate those being deposed.
The historian Lucas Pedretti said that did not necessarily mean such plots had not existed. Rather, the 2022 plot had come to light because, for the first time in history, the coup plotters had been investigated and put on trial.
Pedretti said the existence of the assassination plan was “shocking, but not so surprising”. The historian, who studies Brazil’s brutal 1964-85 military dictatorship, said the armed forces still promoted internally the idea that the bloody regime was a “necessary and legitimate response” to a supposed communist threat.
Quick Guide
Brazil’s dictatorship 1964-1985
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How did it begin?
Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime – including Jair Bolsonaro – credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”.
It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay.
But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.
It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians – including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso – went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.
“And this is particularly true in the case of the special forces,” he said, referring to the army group to which the men accused of plotting to kill Moraes, Lula and Alckmin belonged.
Police believe the men involved in the Moraes murder plot were special forces operatives known as the “kids pretos” or “black cap boys” because of the black caps they wore. Pedretti said the group, set up during the cold war, still maintained the same “enemy elimination mindset”.
“In Bolsonaro’s attempted coup, spearheaded by him and his generals, they simply put that logic and the expertise of the ‘kids pretos’ at the service of the coup-mongering political project,” Pedretti said.
Deadline understands that Nwodim made the decision after it was thought that the cast for Season 51 was set and ready to go ahead of its October 4 return.
“The hardest part of a great party is knowing when to say goodnight. But after seven unforgettable seasons, I have decided to leave SNL. I am immensely grateful to Lorne for the opportunity, to my castmates, the writers, and the crew for their brilliance, support, and friendship. Week after week on that stage taught me more than I could have ever imagined, and I will carry those memories, and that laughter, with me always,” she said.
Nwodim will likely be in demand following her exit; she has increasingly been starring in series such as Peaock’s Poker Face and Mr. Throwback and Netflix film Little Brother, alongside John Cena, Eric André and Michelle Monaghan, in recent years. “Dream come true. I want my other dreams to come true. I want to be in films and I want to do more TV as well,” she told Deadline in 2023.
Nwodim, a pre-med student who was part of UCB, joined the show in 2018, ahead of Season 44, the sole new face joining that year. She was promoted to repertory player ahead of Season 46.
It’s somewhat of a surprise given that Nwodim has broken out in recent years with a memorable performance as Miss Eggy earlier this year, which saw the audience yell expletives live on television after a call and response segment.
She also went viral with Lisa from Temecula, a lawyer whose predilection for overcooked meat has implications for the stability of her dining environment.
Nwodim, who has also played Dionne Warwick and Edith Puthie on the show, was non-committal when asked earlier this year whether she would return for Season 51.
“We like to keep things mysterious around here. That’s part of the allure of SNL, we don’t know what’s going to happen week to week, let alone in the fall, so who knows,” she told Deadline.
On the other hand, the timing for her departure makes sense, coming off the back of the 50th anniversary of SNL, a major milestone, which she admitted was a “surreal experience”, given the number of SNL legends and A-list guest stars that appeared. Nwodim, who was part of the Domingo vow renewal sketch, said it was a “special honor” to be part of that club.
“At one point, there was an event honoring Lorne [Michaels] between the concert on February 14 and the special and Heidi [Gardner] said to me ‘I thought there were 500 people in this cast and I’m realizing there’s only a hundred-and-something of us ever to be in the cast’. What a special honor to get to be part of that club or family. The 50th felt really nostalgic and beautiful,” she said at a recent FYC event.
They join Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang as well as featured players Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline.
