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A U.S. judge has determined 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 Paves the Way for Records Release

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the decision after the DOJ formally requested in November to make public grand jury transcripts and evidence 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 follows the recent enactment of the Transparency Act, means these materials could be released within a 10-day window. The new law requires the Justice Department to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by a specified date in December.

Judicial Pattern of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the second judge to allow the Justice Department to release previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a Florida judge granted a comparable petition 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 is still under consideration.

Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged

The DOJ has stated that Congress aimed for this disclosure when it passed the Transparency Act. The latest request vastly expanded the scope of files slated for release to include 18 categories of investigative materials during the wide-ranging probe.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Search warrants
• Banking documents
• Survivor interview notes
• Data from digital devices
• Material from prior probes in Florida

Context of the Cases

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was taken into custody in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He was discovered deceased 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 two-decade sentence.

The government has indicated it is consulting 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 pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through different channels, including civil cases, official releases, and FOIA requests.

Much of the material the Justice Department now plans to release stems from reports, photographs, videos collected by police in Florida and the federal prosecutor's office there, both of which investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.

That federal probe concluded in 2008 with a confidential deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges by entering a guilty plea to a state charge. He served over a year in a jail work-release program.