A federal judge in New York has ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice can release grand jury materials from the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking investigation.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer said he was ordering the release of the material because of a recent law passed by Congress requiring the Justice Department to release files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein by the end of next week.
In its ruling, it said the court would implement mechanisms to protect victims from the disclosure of materials that “would identify them or invade their privacy.”
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in luring underage girls for Epstein, her ex-boyfriend, to exploit. Epstein died in prison in 2019.
Prosecutors argued that Maxwell recruited and groomed girls, some as young as 14, between 1994 and 2004, before Epstein abused them.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, was moved from a Florida prison to a new minimum-security facility in Texas in August after Assistant U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed her about Epstein.
In a letter to Judge Engelmayer, Maxwell’s legal team said she did not take a position on the Justice Department’s motion to unseal the grand jury material.
Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, which has released thousands of files and messages it requested from Epstein’s estate, said the disclosure was a “victory for transparency.”
“These files are now part of the Epstein files held by the Department of Justice and must be turned over to the Oversight Committee in response to our subpoena,” he said.
The order to release the records followed a similar ruling by a Florida judge on Friday, allowing documents related to the state’s investigation into Epstein that began in 2005 to be released.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in November after previously rejecting calls to release the files.
The law “applies to unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials” relating to Epstein and Maxwell, according to a court order.
The Justice Department has until Dec. 19 to make public all information from federal investigations into Epstein, although the law also allows the department to withhold files that involve active criminal investigations or raise privacy concerns.
Judges in Florida and New York had previously refused to release grand jury materials related to Epstein, citing federal rules requiring grand jury proceedings to be kept secret.
But after Congress passed the bill to release Epstein’s material, the Justice Department made the same request, arguing that the legislation’s “clear mandate” should “override” those secrecy rules.
