NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department may publicly release the sex trafficking investigation against Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidante of Jeffrey Epstein, a federal judge said Tuesday.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer made the ruling after the Justice Department in November asked two judges in New York to unseal transcripts and grand jury exhibits in the Maxwell and Epstein cases, as well as investigative materials that could amount to hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.
The decision, which follows last month's passage of the Epstein File Transparency Act, means the records could be made public within 10 days. The law requires the Justice Department to make Epstein-related records available to the public in a searchable format by Dec. 19.
Engelmayer is the second judge to authorize the Justice Department to publicly release previously secret records from Epstein's trial. Last week, a judge in Florida granted the department's request to release transcripts from a dropped 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 disclosures when it passed the transparency law, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
Three judges — two in New York and one in Florida — previously rejected the department's unusual request to release grand jury records.
But the latest request dramatically expands the files the department said it plans to release to include 18 categories of investigative material collected during a massive sex trafficking investigation.
Financier Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges, a month before he was found dead in his federal prison cell. The death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking in December 2021. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Maxwell, a British socialite, was transferred from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas over the summer as her criminal case drew renewed public attention.
In response to a request from New York judges for more details about what would be released, the department said in recent filings in Manhattan federal court that the materials would include 18 categories, including search warrants, financial records, recordings of interviews with survivors, electronic device data and material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida.
The government said it was consulting with survivors and their lawyers and planned to redact the records to ensure survivors' identities were protected and to prevent the spread of sexual images.
Following the discovery request last month, two judges in New York invited Maxwell, Epstein's heirs and prosecutors to weigh in on the request.
Maxwell's lawyer said his client has not taken a position on the requested disclosure, other than to note that her plans to file a habeas petition could be derailed because public release of the materials would “create undue prejudice so severe as to preclude the possibility of a fair retrial” if the habeas petition is successful.
Lawyers for Epstein's estate took no position. At least one outspoken Epstein accuser, Annie Farmer, said through her lawyer Sigrid S. McCauley that Farmer “fears the possibility that any denial of the petitions could be used by others as a pretext or justification for continuing to conceal important information about Epstein's crimes.”
In August, Judges Richard M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan rejected the department's requests to disclose grand jury transcripts and other materials in the Epstein and Maxwell cases, ruling that such disclosures are rarely, if ever, allowed.
Tens of thousands of pages of records related to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through lawsuits, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
Much of the material the Justice Department plans to release is based on reports, photographs, videos and other materials collected by Palm Beach, Fla., police and the U.S. attorney's office, which investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.
Last year, a Florida judge ordered the release of about 150 pages of transcripts from the state grand jury that investigated Epstein in 2006. On December 5, at the request of the Justice Department, a Florida judge ordered the release of transcripts from a federal grand jury that was also investigating Epstein.
That investigation culminated in 2008 with a then-secret agreement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to state prostitution charges. He served 13 months as part of a prison work release program. Requests
