The US Justice Department can publicly release investigative materials from a sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the long-time confidant of Jeffrey Epstein, a federal judge said on Tuesday.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ruled after the Justice Department in November asked two judges in New York to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from Maxwell and Epstein’s cases, along with investigative materials that could amount to hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.
The ruling, in the wake of the passage last month of the Epstein Files Transparency Act in Congress, means the records could be made public within 10 days. The law requires the Justice Department to provide Epstein-related records to the public in a searchable format by December 19.
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Engelmayer is the second judge to allow the Justice Department to publicly disclose previously secret Epstein court records. Last week, a judge in Florida granted the department’s request to release transcripts from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into Epstein in the 2000s.
A request to release records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case is still pending.
The Justice Department said Congress intended the unsealing when it passed the transparency act, which US President Donald Trump signed into law last month.