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A U.S. judge has ruled 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 Records Release

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the decision after the Justice Department asked the court in November to make public grand jury records and exhibits from the cases of Epstein and Maxwell. This action could lead to the publication of a vast number of hitherto sealed documents.

The court's ruling, which comes in the wake of the recent passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means these materials could be made public within a 10-day period. The new law requires the Justice Department to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by a specified date in December.

Growing Trend of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the latest jurist to allow the Justice Department to publicly disclose once-confidential Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida granted a comparable petition to release transcripts from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the early 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 the U.S. Congress intended this unsealing when it enacted the Transparency Act. The latest request vastly expanded the range 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:

• Court-issued warrants
• Banking documents
• Survivor interview notes
• Electronic device data
• Evidence from prior probes in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was taken into custody in July 2019 on federal charges. He was discovered deceased in a prison cell a month later, with his death ruled a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted 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 sensitive imagery.

Prior Releases

A significant number of pages of documents related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through different channels, including lawsuits, public disclosures, 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 Palm Beach, Florida and the federal prosecutor's office there, both of which investigated Epstein in the 2000s.

That federal probe concluded in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that enabled Epstein to evade federal charges by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He completed over a year in a jail work-release program.