A federal judge in New York on Tuesday granted a Justice Department request to release grand jury material related to Ghislaine Maxwell's case.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer said in his ruling that he has taken great care to “put in place a mechanism to protect victims from the inadvertent release of materials within the discovery in this case that would identify them or otherwise invade their privacy.”
Engelmayer said the grand jury materials in the case, however, "would not reveal new information of any consequence."
He said the two panels heard only "summary testimony from two law enforcement officials; and, with minor exceptions, the evidence before the grand juries was already a matter of public record, largely as a result of Maxwell’s 2021 trial.”
Maxwell was convicted of federal sex trafficking charges, including conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, participation in a sex-trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Tuesday's ruling comes days after a federal judge in Florida also ordered the release of grand jury investigations into Jeffrey Epstein from 2005 and 2007. Congress passed a law last month ordering the Justice Department to release all of its records related to Epstein.
Another judge has yet to rule in a separate request to unseal grand jury records in New York related to Epstein, the politically connected financier who died in prison in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
NBC News reached out to Maxwell's attorney for comment.
Last week, Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, said in a filing that Maxwell "does not take a position" on the Justice Department's request to unseal the material but argued that releasing it "would create undue prejudice" and prevent "the possibility of a fair retrial."
The U.S. Supreme Court this year rejected Maxwell’s challenge to her criminal conviction for recruiting and grooming teenage girls to be abused by Epstein, but in a court filing last week, her attorney said she plans to file another petition challenging the conviction.
The Justice Department filed the motion to unseal grand jury transcripts in July after President Donald Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi "to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval."
That directive came after the Justice Department and the FBI said in a joint memo that they had conducted an exhaustive review of the Epstein and Maxwell cases, that no other people would be charged in connection with their trafficking of minors and that no additional material or evidence would be released.
The unsigned memo sparked tremendous public backlash, including from supporters of Trump, because he, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel had vowed to be more transparent about the probe.
Engelmayer rejected the Justice Department's first request to unseal the materials in the case in August and suggested the government was being misleading in its stated reasons for making them public.
“Its entire premise — that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them—is demonstrably false,” he wrote.
The materials “do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s. They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes. They do not reveal new venues at which their crimes occurred. They do not reveal new sources of their wealth. They do not explore the circumstances of Epstein’s death. They do not reveal the path of the Government’s investigation,” Engelmayer wrote then.
"There's no 'there' there," he added.
In the opinion Tuesday, Engelmayer acknowledged that the Epstein and Maxwell victims who have written letters to the court are “largely supportive of the Act’s command that DOJ’s investigative records” be made public. Still, he said, they voiced concerns that their identities and privacy would be compromised as records were released.
Engelmayer added, “The victims’ concerns, regrettably, have a basis in fact.” He argued that the Justice Department paid “lip service” to the victims but “has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” pointing to the Justice Department's filing the motion to unseal grand jury materials in July “without giving notice to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims.”
He said he changed his position on the release of the materials because of the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation that was passed last month and signed into law by Trump. It requires the Justice Department to make public "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" relating to Epstein and Maxwell in its possession, which the Justice Department argued would include the grand jury materials.
Engelmayer agreed.
It's unclear when the materials will be released. Engelmayer said the court would require the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to “personally certify” that material is “rigorously reviewed” before it is released to ensure victims’ identities are protected.
