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A U.S. judge has ruled that the Justice Department can proceed with the disclosure of investigative materials from the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein.

Court Order Paves the Way for Records Release

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the decision after the Justice Department formally requested in November to make public grand jury transcripts and exhibits from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This action could lead to the release of hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.

The judge's decision, which comes in the wake of the recent enactment of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means these records could be released within a 10-day window. The legislation mandates the Justice Department to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a searchable format by December 19.

Growing Trend of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the latest jurist to permit the Justice Department to publicly disclose previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a comparable petition to release transcripts from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into Epstein from the early 2000s.

A separate request concerning records from Epstein's 2019 sex-trafficking case remains pending.

Breadth of Disclosure Greatly Expanded

The DOJ has stated that Congress aimed for this unsealing when it passed the transparency act. The most recent filing dramatically enlarged the scope of files slated for release to include eighteen distinct types of investigative materials during the extensive sex-trafficking investigation.

These materials are reported to include items such as:

• Search warrants
• Banking documents
• Notes from victim interviews
• Data from digital devices
• Evidence from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was taken into custody in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He was found dead in a federal jail cell a month later, with his death officially deemed a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of related charges in December 2021 and is serving a two-decade sentence.

The government has indicated it is consulting survivors and their lawyers and plans to redact records to safeguard victim anonymity and prevent the dissemination of sensitive imagery.

Previous Disclosures

Tens of thousands of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have previously been made public through different channels, including lawsuits, official releases, and FOIA requests.

Much of the evidence the DOJ now intends to disclose originates from reports, photographs, videos collected by police in Palm Beach, Florida and the local U.S. attorney’s office, both of which looked into Epstein in the 2000s.

That investigation concluded in 2008 with a confidential deal that enabled Epstein to evade federal charges by entering a guilty plea to a state charge. He served over a year in a work-release program.