Timothy Busfield indicted by grand jury in child sex abuse case

Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, Ma., on Sept. 8, 2004. Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice is facing new scrutiny over the decision to withhold the Jeffrey Epstein files earlier this year.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the DOJ to expedite processing of a Freedom of Information Act request related to the Trump administration’s decision in July not to release files from the investigation of Epstein.

With the DOJ already facing a Dec. 19 deadline to turn over the Epstein files, as mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the ruling could shed light on why the Trump administration reversed course on its earlier vow to release the files. A joint FBI and DOJ memo in July concluded there was “no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials” and that their review “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Progressive legal nonprofit Democracy Forward brought the lawsuit after the Justice Department “constructively denied its expedited review request” regarding the internal records, according to the ruling, including whether Attorney General Pam Bondi “misled the American people in representing that the ‘client list’ was on her desk and ready for review,” and whether the DOJ “reversed course on the decision to disclose the Epstein matter case files out of a desire to cover-up the content within.” Specifically, the FOIA request sought records that might show that the reported mention of Trump’s name in the files prompted the reversal.

Judge Tanya Chutkan – who oversaw Trump’s criminal case related to his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result – ruled on Monday that Democracy Forward demonstrated that their request was reasonably tailored to a “matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity that affect public confidence,” clearing the legal bar to order expedited processing.

“The request for ‘records reflecting all correspondence between Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’ is plainly tied to the concern discussed in the media that the Justice Department reversed its position on the disclosure of the Epstein documents only after Attorney General Bondi reportedly informed the President that his name appeared in the files,” Judge Chutkan wrote.

In the same ruling, Judge Chutkan partially denied Democracy Forward’s request for records mentioning “whistleblower” and “flight logs” – concluding that those terms were overbroad – but granted the bulk of their request.

Chutkan ordered both sides to file a report by Dec. 5 to determine the next steps in the FOIA request and lawsuit.

Separately, on Tuesday, the Department of Justice asked two judges in the Southern District of New York to authorize the release of grand jury transcripts and exhibits from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, ahead of the Dec. 19 deadline for the DOJ to release the Epstein files, per the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton – whom Attorney General Pam Bondi tapped to lead an investigation into prominent Democrats associated with Epstein – signed a motion asking the judges who oversaw the Epstein and Maxwell cases to approve the release of the grand jury materials, subject to the necessary redactions.

“In the light of the Act’s clear mandate, the Court should authorize the Department of Justice to release the grand jury transcripts and exhibits and modify any preexisting protective orders that would otherwise prevent public disclosure by the Government of materials the disclosure of which is required by the Act,” the motion said.

A display showing images of Alon, Oren, and Tal Alexander prior to a news conference in New York, Dec. 11, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

(NEW YORK) — Their brand was ultra-lux real estate, and the lifestyle to match.

For more than a decade, brothers Oren and Tal Alexander built a rep of jetsetting glamour and partying at hot spots, flanked always by beautiful women.

What was actually going on behind the scenes, according to federal authorities, was criminal.

Along with a third brother, Alon, Oren and Tal Alexander were arrested in December 2024 on federal sex trafficking charges in a case that has splashed across the nation’s tabloids.

As the brothers prepare to go on trial, the case looms as a battle of he said, she said: whether, as their advocates say, their alleged behavior was simply boys partying hard — or, as authorities allege, something far more sinister.

In a 16-page indictment, the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan says that for well over a decade, the Alexander brothers conspired to “repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault and rape dozens of women,” using the “promise of luxury experiences, travel and accommodations” as a tool “to lure and entice” and ultimately force sex.

Prosecutors have assembled a chorus of women accusers whose accounts they hope will take a jury through a journey of rendezvous, drugs and booze in places like the Hamptons, Aspen, Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

Some of the accusations date to a time before the #MeToo reckoning. The brothers could face 15 years to life in prison, if convicted on all the federal charges. Oren and Alon also face state charges in Florida. And collectively, the three are staring at dozens of civil lawsuits that remain on hold while the criminal cases proceed.

The brothers’ parents, Orly and Shlomy Alexander, maintain their sons are innocent and insist that that will become clear from the testimony in the criminal case.

“We have been living with this ordeal since allegations first surfaced in civil lawsuits and were widely amplified long before any criminal charges were brought. The impact on our family has been profound and deeply painful,” the parents said in a statement to ABC News. “We believe our sons are innocent, and that if they are judged on the evidence presented at trial — free from speculation or public narrative — the truth will prevail. We ask only for a fair process, grounded in facts, where their voices can finally be heard.”

The sons of Israeli immigrants, Oren, 38, and Tal, 39, forged reputations as star brokers in the cutthroat world of New York luxury real estate, with a portfolio that includes some of the all-time most expensive home sales in the United States. As Oren and Tal in 2022 started their own brokerage, Oren’s twin Alon took a job as president of the family’s security firm.

Promiscuous and privileged though they may have been, the Alexander brothers’ lawyers argue they are not guilty of sexual violence. The men leveraged their success and used it to attract women, who, their lawyers insist, participated willingly. Defense attorneys insist the brothers’ did not commit the crimes they’re charged with and that their accusers’ accounts are dubious and “speculative,” motivated by hopes for windfalls.

“The Alexanders were interested in meeting women, and they met women in virtually any place a man could meet a woman: nightclubs, bars, restaurants, beach parties, pool parties, their own homes, the homes of friends, etc.,” their defense said in a November brief filed with the court.

“None of these women were drugged or raped or anything of the sort,” the defense submitted to US District Judge Valerie Caproni, overseeing the case. “Rather, those who engaged in sex with one or more of the Alexander brothers did so consensually. Years later, they either regretted their voluntary decision or, through communicating with other supposed victims, rewrote history or developed a perspective that was different from reality.”

The brothers’ spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, was more pointed: “Many of these began as late-filed civil claims, not criminal cases, and they surfaced without the objective evidence serious allegations would traditionally produce, no contemporaneous reports, medical documentation, or forensic findings,” he said, noting that the alleged victims did not come forward at the time of the alleged assaults. “At the time, the Alexander brothers were young and navigating adult social environments, but that is not criminal conduct and bears no resemblance to trafficking. These accusations exist only within litigation, where financial recovery is the incentive, not proof.”

Ensemble allegations
In their filings, federal prosecutors alleged that the brothers employed a “pattern of behavior” of physical force and “drugged sexual assaults that were the hallmark of the defendants’ conspiracy.”

Prosecutors also point to a series of text message chats between the brothers and their friends about obtaining drugs, including Quaaludes, MDMA, cocaine, GHB and Ambien. The chemicals, federal authorities allege, were “to incapacitate women to further their sex trafficking scheme.”

The Alexanders’ defense challenged the prosecutors’ evidence, including chalking up those conversations as “idle chatter.”

“Even taking the Government’s factual allegations as true (which we do only for the purposes of this motion), there is not a single alleged instance of sex in exchange for something of value,” the defense said in a November filing. “In fact, the statements of the witnesses are precisely the opposite, specifically that they had sex against their will, either because they were drugged, drunk or forced.”

Prosecutors remain confident their case against the brothers is rock solid.

They have notified the court they plan to call seven alleged victims to prove the core of their charges, among them a woman who says she was only 16 years old when the sexual encounter occurred with Alon and Tal, who were 22 and 21 at the time.

Also expected to testify are other alleged victims, some of whom have filed civil lawsuits claiming assault by at least one of the brothers, and may also appear as witnesses in the state criminal case. Though their alleged assaults are not the subject of federal charges, the women may be called as witnesses to what prosecutors say illustrates a history of prior bad acts.

The federal judge has allowed one of the alleged victims in the Florida case to appear as a witness in New York. That woman, known in court papers as “M.G.,” says that in October 2021, she met Oren at a dinner, joined him and others on his boat, and a small group eventually went with him to his Miami home.

M.G. said her conversation with Oren was “flirty,” he gave her a drink, and it turned physical, according to her 2024 interview with a Miami Beach police detective. She alleged that it turned to unwanted and aggressive behavior, and he allegedly ripped her dress off.

When she ran downstairs and tried to open the backyard door, she said it “would not open,” and when she requested to be let out, she later told the detective, he sexually assaulted her with his fingers as she kept saying “no.” M.G. said when she could finally leave, she immediately told her friend what had happened, but that her friend “was pretty drunk.”

In her 2024 police interview, M.G.’s friend said she recalled being told Oren had “tried having sex with [M.G.] after she said no” but didn’t remember being told that Oren had penetrated M.G. in any way. The friend also did not recall the doors being locked when she texted M.G. and they decided to leave.

“I was like, ‘hey, where are you?’ And she said, ‘I think I’m in a room with Oren or something like that.’ And I was like, ‘I’m ready to leave. Let’s — let’s leave.’ And she’s like, ‘yes, please, let’s go.’ And then I just remember walking out of the house,” the friend said. She recalled M.G. seemed “distressed” and had told her “she didn’t want to sleep with him, and he was forcing it.”

In an October 2025 deposition with the Alexanders’ Florida attorneys, the friend reiterated Oren’s alleged advances and M.G.’s objections. But she also said there was nothing unusual about M.G.’s clothing when they left through the front door.

The Alexanders’ attorneys point to what they say are the women’s misaligned memories of the night as evidence the allegations cannot be proven in court.

“M.G’s story is like a C-grade Horror film,” Oren’s Florida defense attorneys Ed O’Donnell IV and Joel Denaro said in a statement to ABC News, adding “her best friend contradicts” several points of the alleged narrative.

“M.G.” did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

Other alleged victims in the federal case have offered similar stories of their own alleged assaults, according to court documents.

Two of the alleged victims in the federal case said in June 2009, they were “invited by party promoters to the Hamptons to celebrate Alon and Oren’s birthday.” Though taken to the club on a party bus, the women learned it would not return them to Manhattan.

Alon “told [one of the women] that he had a nice house” where “there would be a fun afterparty, and invited [her] to stay there,” according to court documents. Both women agreed to go to the house. The night allegedly became a blur of what they said were drugged and repeated group rapes by the brothers, though they said they could only be remembered in “flashes of memory” between the two.

Clash of the narratives
A critical linchpin in each of the Alexanders’ cases will be the credibility of victims’ narratives, according to legal experts — a hallmark of sex-crimes cases.

“The prosecution of this type of case often comes with a unique set of challenges. As we saw during the prosecution of Sean Combs, consent can be a very complex issue,” said Matt Murphy, a former senior prosecutor in Orange County, Calif., referring to the recent case of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“Jurors often struggle with things like continued contact, friendly text messages, alcohol use, and of course, pending civil suits,” said Murphy, now an ABC News legal contributor. “Prosecutorial success will depend heavily on victim credibility and solid corroboration. We’ll see.”

Some of the women who have come forward with their allegations have said they did so only after learning of others who said they had similar experiences with the brothers.

“Like, handfuls of girls … it was like everyone in Miami knew,” one of the alleged victims in the Florida case, identified in court papers as S.M., told a detective in August 2024, as seen in body-worn camera footage of the interview obtained by ABC News.

“Now I finally feel like, no one’s going to call me a liar ’cause I’m not the only one,” she told the detective.

S.M., who was a model at the time, said she went to an event where the group included Oren in October 2017. Afterward, she said she went with him to his apartment. Once there, she said, he gave her a glass of wine and a virtual reality headset to try, then led her to a bedroom, pushing her onto the bed, where she says he assaulted her as she told him, “no.”

The brothers’ attorneys have stressed that the real-time behavior from some of the alleged victims belies the narrative they have told prosecutors and the public.

The day after that alleged assault, S.M. posted a picture of herself in a bikini on social media with the caption, “Cloudy with a chance of awesome,” according to court filings. That night, the defense said, she went out with friends to a nightclub.

“I always am in a bikini and take pictures in bikinis because I’m a model,” S.M. explained to the defense during a September 2025 deposition in Florida, according to a transcript obtained by ABC News.

Days after her alleged assault, S.M. texted Oren a picture of them, together and smiling, taken at the event, according to court documents.

“You would acknowledge that by you sending him that picture three days later, it would indicate that you in no way thought that he sexually assaulted you back then,” the Alexanders’ Florida defense attorney Edward O’Donnell said during the deposition.

“I feel like I was in some sort of denial,” S.M. said. “I was hoping that it didn’t happen.”

Two weeks after her alleged assault, S.M. met up with Oren again. “I wanted him to make it right because I was — I didn’t want it to be true and I was hurting inside,” S.M. said during her deposition.

Their texts after the alleged assault tell a different story, O’Donnell argued.

“It would be nice to have dinner. Hopefully we can schedule something before you leave,” S.M. texted Oren on Nov. 2, 2017, according to court documents.

“Documented-wise, your actions, your photographs, your downloads, your videoing him, taking photographs of him, you sending him those pictures, all subsequent to you, the date you claim that you were sexually assaulted, all go against that your sex was non-consensual,” O’Donnell said.

S.M. insisted she did not consent to that encounter.

“I don’t have evidence of what happened in that room, but I know what happened in that room and how I chose to act afterwards,” S.M. responded during the deposition. “Whether it be naive or hopeful, doesn’t change that.”

S.M.’s attorney declined to comment to ABC News.

On Jan. 8, a grand jury returned one of several superseding indictments, adding an additional charge against Alon and Oren for allegedly drugging and assaulting a woman during a 2012 Bahamian cruise.

The two brothers had already been charged for allegedly slipping her a drugged drink and taking “turns raping” her; the additional count also charged them with allegedly engaging in sex with her “while she was physically incapable of declining participation.”

In a filing over the weekend, the Alexanders’ attorneys filed a motion to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that prosecutors have repeatedly made last-minute changes to the charges that have left insufficient time for the defense to fully investigate.

In particular, the defense cast doubt on the authenticity of a foreign birth certificate which would establish the alleged age of one of the females involved in some of the activity charged. Prosecutors allege that in 2009, Oren “recorded himself and another person engaging in sexual activity with a incapacitated 17-year-old girl in Manhattan.”

In their latest filing, the defense argued verifying such a birth certificate from a city “in an active war” is near-impossible, and more time is needed given the “central importance of the true birth date.” The judge has not yet weighed in.

The judge has scheduled jury selection to begin on Tuesday. The trial, which is scheduled to start on Jan. 26, is expected to last roughly a month.

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