A New York judge has authorized the release of grand jury materials from the criminal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law by President Donald Trump. The grand jury materials could represent hundreds or thousands of previously undisclosed documents.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer previously denied the release of transcripts and evidence in the Ghislaine Maxwell case. Under the Epstein Transparency Act, a judge signed off on the release of the material.
Engelmayer said he would put in place a mechanism to prevent the accidental release of any materials that could identify victims or compromise their privacy.
The decision, which followed the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, means the records could be released 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.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, was convicted of participating in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of women and girls and is serving a 20-year sentence in a Texas prison. In October, the US Supreme Court rejected her bid to overturn the conviction.
The latest request to release grand jury materials follows the passage of the Transparency Act, which came after months of pressure to release more information related to the convicted sex offender.
A federal judge in Florida last week granted a similar request by the Justice Department to release grand jury material from the 2000 Epstein investigation.
A request to release records from Epstein’s 2019 sex-trafficking case is still pending.
A bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress required U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release unclassified files related to the Epstein and Maxwell investigations.
Epstein, a financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, a month before he was found dead in a federal prison cell. The death was ruled a suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Maxwell, a British socialite, was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas over the summer as her criminal case drew renewed public attention.
