The government will have to meet a high legal bar for the court to agree that any of the grand jury documents should be released—and those materials could still be disappointing.

In February, US attorney-general Pam Bondi declared in an interview with Fox News that the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein’s client list was “sitting” on her desk. But the announcement, originally seen as fulfilling Donald Trump’s campaign promise to release files on Epstein’s death, has now come back to haunt Bondi — and the president.