Richard M. Berman

Richard M. Berman (born 1943, in New York City) is a senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998. He presided over United States v. Epstein, the 2019 sex-trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein, ordering Epstein detained on July 18, 2019 and, after Epstein's death in federal custody, holding a public hearing on August 27, 2019 at which victims spoke before he dismissed the indictment. In 2025 he first refused and then, after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, granted the government's motions to unseal the case's grand jury record. He also presided over the Iran-sanctions prosecution of the Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank. He is not related to Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney whose office brought the Epstein case.¹²³

Career

Berman graduated from Cornell University in 1964 and the New York University School of Law in 1967, and in 1996, while in private practice, earned a master's degree in social work from the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Services. He practiced in New York from 1970 to 1974, was executive assistant to Senator Jacob Javits of New York from 1974 to 1977, executive director of the New York State Alliance to Save Energy from 1977 to 1978, and general counsel and executive vice president of Warner Cable from 1978 to 1986. After further private practice he sat as a judge of the Queens County Family Court from 1995 to 1998. Clinton nominated him on May 21, 1998 to the seat vacated by Kevin Thomas Duffy; he was confirmed on October 21 and commissioned on October 22, 1998, and took senior status on September 11, 2011.¹

In 2001 Berman warned Steven Hoffenberg, the former chief executive of Towers Financial Corporation, that "he may not assert baseless claims or abuse the judicial process through the instigation of frivolous or duplicative suits"; a 2018 draft memorandum by Epstein's lawyers at Troutman Sanders quoted the warning under the heading "Multiple SDNY Judges Warned the Person Driving This Action Against Such Frivolous Lawsuits."⁴

United States v. Epstein

A grand jury in the Southern District returned a sealed two-count indictment on July 2, 2019, unsealed on July 8 after Epstein's arrest at Teterboro Airport. On July 16 Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe filed a supplement to the government's detention memorandum disclosing that in late 2018, days after the Miami Herald began its series on the case, Epstein had wired 100,000 dollars and 250,000 dollars to two individuals named as potential co-conspirators in the 2007 Epstein non-prosecution agreement, identified only as Individual-1 and Individual-2. On July 18, 2019 Berman granted the government's motion for remand and denied release (ECF No. 32), finding Epstein a danger to the community and a flight risk.²⁵

Epstein was found dead in the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019, and on August 19 the U.S. Attorney asked the court to approve an order of nolle prosequi. Berman convened a public hearing on August 27. Appearing were Assistant U.S. Attorneys Maurene Comey and Alison Moe, defense counsel Reid Weingarten and Martin Weinberg, an FBI special agent and an NYPD detective. Berman said that "Mr. Epstein's death obviously means that a trial in which he is a defendant cannot take place," and answered a New York Law Journal opinion article by two professors arguing against such a hearing: "I respectfully disagree with the Law Journal[.] . . . [P]ublic hearings promote transparency and they provide the court with insights and information which the court may not otherwise be aware of." He described Rule 48(a) as "clearly directed toward an independent judicial assessment of the public interest in dismissing the indictment," and said it was "required that the court consider the views of the victims in the case at the hearing." He observed that "one of the authors of that article is himself counsel in one of the Epstein-related cases" and that he was surprised this was not disclosed. More than a dozen victims spoke, some through their lawyers. On August 29, 2019 Berman signed the order of nolle prosequi (ECF No. 52). On August 30 Professor Bruce A. Green of Fordham University School of Law wrote to Berman to "clarify the record" after reading a partial transcript, and Berman thanked him on September 4.²⁶

In June 2023 an expert report for the Government of the United States Virgin Islands in its suit against JPMorgan Chase cited the transcript of the August 27 hearing among its sources.⁷

Criticism of the Justice Department

On May 6, 2020 staff of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York circulated among themselves a news report of "Judge Berman commenting, in the middle of a random fraud sentencing, on his objections to DOJ policies and investigations post-Epstein," linking a New York Daily News story on Berman, Attorney General William Barr and the Bureau of Prisons; an earlier message in the chain forwarded a New York Law Journal article on Prince Andrew's non-cooperation with prosecutors "for awareness given that this is an ongoing issue."⁸

The Grand Jury Record

On July 18, 2025 Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche entered an appearance in the closed Epstein case and moved to unseal its grand jury transcripts (ECF Nos. 60, 61), the same day he filed the matching motion in United States v. Maxwell. After reviewing the 70 pages of transcripts of June 18 and July 2, 2019, the exhibits (a PowerPoint presentation and four pages of call logs), letters from victims and their lawyers and a letter from the executors of Epstein's estate, Berman denied the motion on August 20, 2025 (ECF No. 77). He held that Rule 6(e) governed, that "there is clear precedent and sound purpose for grand jury sealing," and that the government "fails to demonstrate any 'special circumstance[]' which might justify unsealing," quoting Judge Paul Engelmayer's ruling of August 11 in the Maxwell case and the Second Circuit's statement that grand jury secrecy is a tradition "older than our Nation itself." On September 16, 2025 he denied an application by NBC News to unseal the names of Individual-1 and Individual-2 (ECF No. 82).²³

After the Epstein Files Transparency Act became law, the government renewed its motion on November 24, 2025, and on December 10, one day after Engelmayer's parallel ruling, Berman granted it (ECF No. 92): "The recently enacted 'Epstein Files Transparency Act,' Pub. L. No. 119-38, 139 Stat. 656 (2025) . . . compels the US Department of Justice . . . to make public by December 19, 2025 certain evidentiary files. The Court hereby grants the Government's motion in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and with the un[e]qivocal right of Epstein victims to have their identity and privacy protected." From January 15 to February 5, 2026 U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton sent him a series of letters on the Department's review and compliance. On January 23 Berman answered a letter from Haley Robson, transmitted by the government, that there was "no relevant case on my docket at this time." On February 1 the victims' lawyer Brittany Henderson sent Berman and Engelmayer an emergency request for judicial intervention under the Act; Berman set a conference, which he cancelled on February 3 after the parties resolved the privacy issues.³

Halkbank

In 2019 the United States indicted Türkiye Halk Bankası, a bank majority-owned through the Turkish Wealth Fund by the Republic of Turkey, for a multi-year conspiracy to evade sanctions on Iran; the indictment alleged that the bank, "with the assistance of high-ranking Turkish government officials, laundered billions of dollars of Iranian oil and gas proceeds through the global financial system." The prosecution proceeded before Berman in the case captioned United States v. Zarrab. On October 1, 2020 he denied Halkbank's motion to dismiss, reasoning that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act "does not appear to grant immunity in criminal proceedings." The Second Circuit affirmed on October 22, 2021 (16 F.4th 336), and on April 19, 2023 the Supreme Court held that the Act does not apply to criminal cases but remanded on common-law immunity, Justice Neil Gorsuch writing in partial dissent that the decision "overcomplicates the law for no good reason." The Second Circuit ruled again on October 22, 2024 (120 F.4th 41).⁹