A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday declined the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts from a probe into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.  

“The Court’s hands are tied — a point that the government concedes,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg. 

The decision thwarts Trump’s efforts to tamp down criticism from his political base for now but does not affect the administration's other pending requests to release grand jury transcripts tied to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislane Maxwell, in New York. 

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