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A U.S. judge has ruled that the Justice Department is authorized to carry out 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 records and evidence from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This request could lead to the publication of a vast number of hitherto sealed documents.

The judge's decision, which comes in the wake of the recent passage of the Transparency Act, means these records could be released within a 10-day period. The new law requires the Justice Department to provide Epstein-related records in a digitally searchable form by December 19.

Judicial Pattern of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the second judge to allow the Justice Department to release once-confidential records from the Epstein case. Recently, a judge in Florida granted a comparable petition to release transcripts from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the 2000s.

A separate request concerning records from Epstein's 2019 sex-trafficking case is still under consideration.

Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged

The DOJ has stated that Congress aimed for this unsealing when it passed the transparency act. The latest request vastly expanded the range of files slated for release to include eighteen distinct types of investigative materials during the wide-ranging sex-trafficking investigation.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Search warrants
• Financial records
• Notes from victim interviews
• Data from digital devices
• Evidence from prior probes in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy 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 currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The federal authorities has indicated it is consulting victims and their attorneys and plans to redact records to protect survivors' identities and stop the sharing of explicit imagery.

Previous Disclosures

Tens of thousands of pages of documents related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through various means, including civil cases, official releases, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Much of the material the DOJ now intends to disclose stems from reports, photographs, videos gathered by police in Florida and the local U.S. attorney’s office, both of which investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.

That federal probe ended in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that enabled Epstein to evade federal prosecution by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program.