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

By MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday granted the 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 traffick...