Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend Batman Forever/R. McDonald event in New York City on June 13, 1995.
Patrick McMullan | Getty Images
A New York federal judge on Tuesday ordered the unsealing of grand jury materials and other documents related to the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite convicted in 2021 of procuring underage girls for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Paul Engelmayer’s order came at the request of the Justice Department, which invoked the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last month.
The law would require the Justice Department to disclose investigative materials about Epstein, a former friend of President Donald Trump who killed himself in prison in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child trafficking charges.
For her conviction, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Grand jury materials are typically permanently sealed by law.
That’s why Engelmayer rejected the Justice Department’s first request over the summer to release grand jury materials in the Maxwell case.
In his order Tuesday, the judge noted that the Epstein files “do not specifically reference grand jury materials.”
However, Englemayer added, “The court nevertheless finds, again in agreement with the DOJ, that the law substantively covers the grand jury materials in this case.”
Englemayer’s order authorizes the DOJ to make publicly available grand jury transcripts and exhibits, as well as extensive material that federal prosecutors disclosed to Maxwell’s defense attorneys for her 2021 criminal trial.
But he also amended a protective order in the case to establish a mechanism “to protect victims from the inadvertent release of materials … that would identify them or otherwise invade their privacy.”
It is not clear when the DOJ will release the material covered by Engelmayer’s order. CNBC has reached out to the DOJ and Maxwell’s defense attorney for comment.
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The public likely won’t learn much, if anything, new about Epstein or Maxwell from the unsealed grand jury materials.
In his order Tuesday, Englemayer said the Justice Department’s original request to unseal the files “misled victims and the public by portraying the Maxwell grand jury materials as essential to the goal of ‘transparency for the American public,’ when in fact the grand jury materials would not contribute to public knowledge.”
“It is not apparent from the materials that anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell had sexual contact with a minor,” Englemayer wrote in August in rejecting the Justice Department’s first attempt to unseal the materials.
“They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein or Maxwell. They do not reveal any previously unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes,” the judge had written. “They are not disclosing new locations where their crimes were committed. They are not disclosing new sources of their wealth. They are not investigating the circumstances of Epstein’s death. They are not disclosing the path of the government’s investigation.”
Although he granted the Justice Department’s request to unseal the materials, the judge criticized prosecutors for again failing to notify Maxwell and Epstein’s victims before requesting the materials’ release.
“In its two rounds of open records requests to this court, the DOJ has paid lip service to the victims of Maxwell and Epstein but has failed to treat them with the care they deserve,” Engelmayer wrote.
“When the DOJ requested permission to release records pursuant to the Act on November 24, 2025, it again acted without notice to Maxwell and Epstein’s victims,” the judge wrote.
“The Court…was once again compelled to order the DOJ to immediately notify these victims of its latest motion and to set a deadline for victims’ submissions.”
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