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A U.S. judge has determined that the Justice Department can proceed with the disclosure of case files 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 DOJ asked the court in November to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from the cases of Epstein and Maxwell. This action could lead to the release of a vast number of previously unreleased documents.

The judge's decision, which follows the recent passage of the Transparency Act, means these records could be made public within a 10-day period. The legislation requires the Justice Department to provide pertaining to Epstein records in a digitally searchable form by a specified date in December.

Growing Trend of Disclosure

Engelmayer is the second judge to permit the Justice Department to publicly disclose previously secret Epstein court records. Recently, a Florida judge 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 sex-trafficking case remains pending.

Scope of Release Greatly Expanded

The DOJ has stated that Congress aimed for this unsealing when it passed the Transparency Act. The most recent filing dramatically enlarged the range of files slated for release to include 18 categories of evidence gathered during the extensive probe.

These documents are reported to include items such as:

• Court-issued warrants
• Financial records
• Notes from victim interviews
• Electronic device data
• Evidence 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 federal jail cell a month later, with his death officially deemed a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of related charges in December 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The government has indicated it is consulting survivors and their lawyers and will edit records to safeguard victim anonymity and prevent the dissemination of explicit imagery.

Previous Disclosures

A significant number of pages of documents related to Epstein and Maxwell have previously been made public through various means, including lawsuits, official releases, and FOIA requests.

Much of the material the Justice Department now intends to disclose stems from reports, photographs, videos gathered 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 then-secret arrangement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He served over a year in a jail work-release program.