Federal judge unseals Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury materials amid Epstein case controversy.
Republicans and Democrats have played chicken with each other all year over the Jeffrey Epstein case. This morning, the inevitable crash got a little closer. Or at least, the egg got closer to a lot of faces, as we’ll see in a warning.
A second federal judge has released the material from a grand jury investigation into the Epstein sex-trafficking case. After a court in Florida unsealed the original grand jury material from 18 years ago, a New York court has ordered the release of the material from a grand jury probe in 2019 into Ghislaine Maxwell:
The Justice Department can publicly release investigative materials from a sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein, a federal judge said on Tuesday.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ruled after the Justice Department in November asked two judges in New York to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from Maxwell and Epstein’s cases, along with investigative materials that could amount to hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.
The ruling, in the wake of the passage last month of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means the records could be made public within 10 days. The law requires the Justice Department provide Epstein-related records to the public in a searchable format by Dec. 19.
The bill passed by Congress and signed by Donald Trump had a similar impact with Englemayer as it did with Judge Rodney Smith in Florida. Unlike Smith’s relatively terse order, Englemayer issued a 24-page ruling, which essentially came down to the same rationale nonetheless:
The Act unambiguously applies to the discovery in this case. It governs “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of [DOJ], including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices” related to Maxwell, Epstein, and other enumerated subjects. Act § 2(a) (emphasis added). That broad formulation embraces the voluminous discovery subject to the Protective Order in this case. Such, by definition, was, and is, possessed by DOJ, and specifically by the United States Attorney’s Office in this District (the “USAO”).7
The Court thus finds that modification of the Protective Order is necessary to enable DOJ to carry out its legal obligations under the Act. Such relief is authorized by the Protective Order, which expressly provides for its modification by the Court. See Protective Order at 11–12.
As Smith did with much less fanfare, Englemayer also concludes that the new statute passed by Congress overrides the rules governing grand-jury secrecy in this one instance.
