WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Florida ruled Wednesday that its “hands are tied” in releasing federal grand jury transcripts from 2005 and 2007 in connection with an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

The ruling was separate from a request that the Justice Department has pending related to a grand jury in the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was ultimately indicted. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial in New York. His accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is now serving a 20-year sentence.

In the Florida case, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg said that, though the government believes special circumstances exist and the policy reasons for grand jury secrecy have expired, its rationale “are no exceptions” to grand jury secrecy.

The government, Rosenberg wrote, “has effectively conceded that the Court’s hands are tied” because of the Eleventh Circuit law.