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A federal 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 issued the ruling after the Justice Department asked the court in November to make public grand jury transcripts and evidence from the cases of Epstein and Maxwell. This request could lead to the release of hundreds or thousands of hitherto sealed documents.

The judge's decision, which comes in the wake of the recent enactment of the Transparency Act, means these materials could be released within a 10-day period. The legislation requires the DOJ to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a searchable format by a specified date in December.

Growing Trend of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the second judge to permit the DOJ to publicly disclose once-confidential Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a similar request to release transcripts from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the 2000s.

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

Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged

The DOJ has stated that Congress aimed for this disclosure 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 materials are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Financial records
• Notes from victim interviews
• Data from digital devices
• Material from prior probes in Florida

Case Background

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

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

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through various means, including lawsuits, official releases, and FOIA requests.

Much of the material the Justice Department now intends to disclose originates from reports, photographs, videos gathered by police in Florida and the local U.S. attorney’s office, both of which looked into Epstein in the 2000s.

That investigation concluded in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution by entering a guilty plea to a state charge. He completed over a year in a work-release program.