U.S. Justice Department can unseal Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case records, judge says

U.S. House Democrats have released photos and videos of Epstein’s private island as part of an effort to pressure the Trump government to release the full files

NEW YORK -- A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday granted the U.S. Justice Department’s request to publicly release grand jury transcripts and other material from Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime confidant, but he cautioned that people shouldn’t expect to learn much new information from them.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who along with other judges had previously rejected Justice Department unsealing requests before the transparency law was passed, said the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”

“They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” Engelmayer wrote. “They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes.”

Engelmayer, in Manhattan, ruled Tuesday after the Justice Department had asked judges in the wake of the law’s passage last month to lift secrecy orders in Maxwell’s and Epstein’s cases that had kept some records under wraps. A request to unseal records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case is pending.

Engelmayer is the second judge to act after the Epstein Files Transparency Act created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings secret. Last week, a Florida federal judge ordered the release of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.

The law, signed by President Donald Trump after months of public and political pressure, requires the Justice Department to provide the public with Epstein-related records by Dec. 19.

The fate of the government’s Epstein files has dominated the first year of Trump’s second term in office. The Republican campaigned for reelection last year on a promise to release the files, and his administration did disclose some records earlier this year -- almost all of them already public -- but suddenly stopped in July after promising a “truckload” more.

Forced to act by the new transparency law, the Justice Department says it plans to release 18 categories of investigative materials gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims, and data from electronic devices.

Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and killed himself in jail a month later. Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence. After giving an interview to the Justice Department’s second-in-command in July, she was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas.

The U.S. Justice Department said it was conferring with victims and their lawyers and planned to redact or black out portions of records to protect victims’ identities and prevent dissemination of sexualized images. Engelmayer said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton must personally certify that records have been “rigorously reviewed” to avoid an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

Maxwell’s lawyer told Engelmayer last week that unsealing records from her case could spoil her plans to file a habeas petition, a legal filing seeking to overturn her conviction. The release “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial,” Maxwell lawyer David Markus wrote. The Supreme Court in October declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal.

Annie Farmer, a vocal Epstein and Maxwell accuser, fought for the transparency act’s passage and supports the release of court records. She said through her lawyer, Sigrid S. McCawley, that she “is wary of the possibility that any denial of the motions may be used by others as a pretext or excuse for continuing to withhold crucial information concerning Epstein’s crimes.”

In August, Engelmayer and Judge Richard M. Berman denied the department’s requests to unseal grand jury transcripts and other material from Maxwell’s and Epstein’s cases, ruling that such disclosures are rarely, if ever, allowed.

Tens of thousands of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released through lawsuits, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Many of the materials the Justice Department plans to release stem from reports, photographs, videos and other materials gathered by police in Palm Beach, Florida, and the U.S. attorney’s office there, both of which investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.

Last year, a Florida judge ordered the release of about 150 pages of transcripts from a state grand jury that investigated Epstein in 2006. On Dec. 5, at the Justice Department’s request, a Florida judge ordered the unsealing of transcripts from a federal grand jury there that also investigated Epstein.

That investigation ended in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program.

By Michael R. Sisak