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A U.S. judge has determined 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 Document Disclosure

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the decision after the Justice Department formally requested in November to unseal grand jury transcripts and evidence from the cases of both Maxwell and Epstein. This request could lead to the release of a vast number of previously unreleased documents.

The court's ruling, which follows the recent passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means these records could be made public within a 10-day window. The legislation mandates the DOJ to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a searchable format by December 19.

Growing Trend of Unsealing

Engelmayer is the second judge to permit the Justice Department to release once-confidential Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a comparable petition to release transcripts from an earlier federal probe into Epstein from the 2000s.

A separate request concerning records from Epstein's 2019 criminal case remains pending.

Scope of Release Greatly Expanded

The Justice Department has stated that the U.S. Congress intended this unsealing when it passed the transparency act. The latest request dramatically enlarged the scope of files slated for release to include 18 categories of investigative materials during the extensive probe.

These materials are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Banking documents
• Notes from victim interviews
• Electronic device data
• Material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida

Case Background

Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier, was taken into custody in July 2019 on sex trafficking 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 currently 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.

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have previously been made public through various means, including civil cases, official releases, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Much of the material the Justice Department now intends to disclose stems from reports, photographs, videos gathered by police in Palm Beach, 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 prosecution by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He completed 13 months in a jail work-release program.