đź”— Share this article Judge Rules Justice Department Can Release Ghislaine Maxwell Court Documents A federal judge has determined that the Justice Department is authorized to carry out the public release of investigative materials from the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Court Order Clears the Path for Document Disclosure Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the ruling after the DOJ formally requested in November to make public grand jury records and exhibits from the cases of Epstein and Maxwell. This request could lead to the release of hundreds or thousands of hitherto sealed documents. The judge's decision, which comes in the wake of the recent passage of the Transparency Act, means these materials could be released 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. Judicial Pattern of Disclosure Engelmayer is the latest jurist to allow the DOJ to publicly disclose once-confidential Epstein court records. Recently, a judge in Florida approved a comparable petition to unseal records from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into Epstein from the 2000s. A further petition concerning records from Epstein's 2019 criminal case is still under consideration. Breadth of Disclosure Significantly Enlarged The Justice Department has stated that Congress intended this disclosure 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 wide-ranging probe. These materials are reported to include items such as: Search warrants Financial records Survivor interview notes Data from digital devices Material from prior probes in Florida Context of the Cases Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, was arrested 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 related charges in December 2021 and is currently serving a two-decade sentence. The federal authorities has indicated it is consulting victims and their attorneys and plans to redact records to protect survivors' identities and stop the sharing of explicit imagery. Previous Disclosures A significant number of pages of documents pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through various means, including civil cases, official releases, and FOIA requests. Much of the evidence the DOJ now plans to release originates from reports, photographs, videos collected by police in Florida and the federal prosecutor's office there, both of which investigated Epstein in the 2000s. That federal probe ended in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that enabled Epstein to evade federal prosecution by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He completed 13 months in a jail work-release program.