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A federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department is authorized to carry out the public release of case files from the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein.

Judicial Ruling Paves the Way for Document Disclosure

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the ruling after the DOJ asked the court in November to make public grand jury transcripts and evidence from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This action could lead to the release of a vast number of hitherto sealed documents.

The court's ruling, which follows the recent passage of the Transparency Act, means these materials could be made public within a 10-day period. The new law requires the Justice Department to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by a specified date in December.

Judicial Pattern of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the latest jurist to permit the DOJ to publicly disclose previously secret records from the Epstein case. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a similar request to release transcripts from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the early 2000s.

A further petition concerning records from Epstein's 2019 sex-trafficking case remains pending.

Scope of Release Greatly Expanded

The DOJ has stated that Congress intended this unsealing when it passed the Transparency Act. The latest request dramatically enlarged the range of files slated for release to include 18 categories of investigative materials during the extensive sex-trafficking investigation.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Financial records
• Survivor interview notes
• Electronic device data
• 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 prison cell a month later, with his death ruled a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex-trafficking charges in December 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The government has indicated it is conferring with survivors and their lawyers and will edit records to protect survivors' identities and stop the sharing of explicit imagery.

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through different channels, including lawsuits, public disclosures, and FOIA requests.

Much of the material the DOJ now intends to disclose stems from reports, photographs, videos collected by police in Florida and the federal prosecutor's office there, both of which looked into Epstein in the mid-2000s.

That investigation concluded in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that enabled Epstein to evade federal prosecution by entering a guilty plea to a state prostitution charge. He served over a year in a jail work-release program.