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

Court Order Clears the Path for Document Disclosure

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 request could lead to the publication of a vast number of previously unreleased documents.

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

Growing Trend of Unsealing

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

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

Breadth of Disclosure Greatly Expanded

The Justice Department has stated that Congress intended this disclosure when it enacted the transparency act. The most recent filing vastly expanded the scope of files slated for release to include eighteen distinct types of evidence gathered during the extensive sex-trafficking investigation.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Search warrants
• Financial records
• Survivor interview notes
• Electronic device data
• Material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier, was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges. He was found dead in a prison 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 two-decade 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

Tens of thousands of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through different channels, including civil cases, official releases, and FOIA requests.

Much of the evidence the Justice Department 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 investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.

That investigation concluded in 2008 with a confidential deal that enabled Epstein to evade federal charges by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He completed 13 months in a jail work-release program.