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A federal judge has determined that the Justice Department is authorized to carry out the public release of investigative materials 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 Justice Department formally requested in November to make public grand jury records and exhibits from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This request could lead to the publication of hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.

The judge's decision, which comes in the wake of the recent passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means these records could be made public within a 10-day period. The new law mandates the Justice Department to provide Epstein-related records in a searchable format by a specified date in December.

Judicial Pattern of Disclosure

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

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

Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged

The DOJ has stated that Congress intended this unsealing when it enacted the transparency act. The most recent filing vastly expanded the range of files slated for release to include 18 categories of evidence gathered during the wide-ranging probe.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Banking documents
• Survivor interview notes
• 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 federal charges. He was found dead in a prison cell a month later, with his death officially deemed 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 victims and their attorneys and will edit records to safeguard victim anonymity and prevent the dissemination of sensitive imagery.

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have previously been made public through various means, including civil cases, official releases, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Much of the evidence the Justice Department now intends to disclose originates from reports, photographs, videos collected 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 confidential deal that enabled Epstein to evade federal prosecution by entering a guilty plea to a state charge. He completed 13 months in a work-release program.