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

Court Order Paves the Way for Document Disclosure

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the decision after the DOJ formally requested 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 hundreds or thousands of hitherto sealed documents.

The court's ruling, which comes in the wake of the recent enactment of the Transparency Act, means these materials could be made public within a 10-day window. The legislation requires the DOJ to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by December 19.

Growing Trend of Disclosure

Engelmayer is the second judge to allow the Justice Department to publicly disclose previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a comparable petition to unseal records from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the 2000s.

A separate request concerning records from Epstein's 2019 criminal case remains pending.

Scope of Release Greatly Expanded

The Justice Department has stated that Congress intended this unsealing when it enacted 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 wide-ranging sex-trafficking investigation.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Financial records
• Survivor interview notes
• Data from digital devices
• Material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He was found dead in a federal jail cell a month later, with his death ruled a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of related charges in December 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The government has indicated it is conferring with survivors and their lawyers and plans to redact records to protect survivors' identities and prevent the dissemination of explicit imagery.

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through various means, including civil cases, public disclosures, and FOIA requests.

Much of the evidence the Justice Department now plans to release 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 concluded in 2008 with a confidential deal that enabled Epstein to evade federal charges by pleading guilty to a state charge. He served 13 months in a work-release program.