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A U.S. judge has ruled that the Department of Justice is authorized to carry out the disclosure of investigative materials from the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the close associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

Court Order Clears the Path for Records Release

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the ruling after the DOJ asked the court in November to unseal grand jury records and exhibits from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This request could lead to the release 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 released within a 10-day period. The legislation mandates the Justice Department to provide Epstein-related records in a searchable format by December 19.

Judicial Pattern of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the latest jurist to permit the DOJ to release previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a similar request to unseal records from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the 2000s.

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

Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged

The Justice Department has stated that Congress aimed for this disclosure when it passed the Transparency Act. The most recent filing dramatically enlarged the scope of files slated for release to include 18 categories of investigative materials during the wide-ranging sex-trafficking investigation.

These materials are reported to include items such as:

• Search warrants
• Financial records
• Survivor interview notes
• Data from digital devices
• Material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He was found dead in a prison 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 consulting survivors and their lawyers and will edit records to protect survivors' identities and prevent the dissemination of explicit imagery.

Prior Releases

A significant number of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through different channels, including civil cases, public disclosures, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Much of the evidence the DOJ now plans to release stems from reports, photographs, videos collected by police in Palm Beach, Florida and the local U.S. attorney’s office, both of which looked into Epstein in the 2000s.

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