Secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case can be made public, a judge ruled on Wednesday, joining two other judges in granting the Justice Department’s requests to unseal material from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse.
US District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his long-time confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
The judge previously cautioned that the roughly 70 pages of grand jury materials slated for release were hardly revelatory and “merely a hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s conduct.
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On Tuesday, another Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case. Last week, a judge in Florida approved the unsealing of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.
The Justice Department asked the judges to lift secrecy orders after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by US President Donald Trump last month, created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential.
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