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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.

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 exhibits from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This action could lead to the release of a vast number 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 released within a 10-day period. The legislation requires the DOJ to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by a specified date in December.

Growing Trend of Disclosure

Engelmayer is the latest jurist to allow the DOJ to release previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida granted a similar request to unseal records from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into Epstein from the 2000s.

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

Scope of Release Greatly Expanded

The Justice Department has stated that the U.S. Congress intended this unsealing when it enacted the transparency act. The latest request vastly expanded the scope of files slated for release to include eighteen distinct types of evidence gathered during the wide-ranging probe.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Financial records
• Survivor interview notes
• Data from digital devices
• Evidence from prior probes 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 officially deemed a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of related charges in December 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The government has indicated it is consulting victims and their attorneys and will edit records to protect survivors' identities and stop the sharing of explicit imagery.

Previous Disclosures

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

Much of the evidence the DOJ now plans to release stems from reports, photographs, videos gathered by police in Florida and the federal prosecutor's office there, both of which looked into Epstein in the 2000s.

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