Judge unseals Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury materials, citing Epstein files act
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend the 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 to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Paul Engelmayer’s order came at the request of the Department of Justice, which cited the Epstein Files Transparency Act that Congress passed last month.
The ruling comes several days after another federal judge, in Florida, ordered that grand jury investigative material from probes of Epstein in 2005 and 2007 be unsealed because of the act.
The act mandates that the DOJ disclose investigative material about Epstein, a former friend of President Donald Trump who killed himself in jail in August 2019, weeks after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for her conviction.
Grand jury materials are normally permanently sealed by law.
Because of that, Engelmayer denied the DOJ’s initial request over the summer to unseal grand jury materials in Maxwell’s case.
In his order on Tuesday, the judge noted that the Epstein files “Act does not explicitly refer to grand jury materials.”
But, Englemayer added, “The Court nonetheless holds — again in agreement with DOJ — that the Act textually covers the grand jury materials in this case.”
Englemayer’s order authorizes the DOJ to publicly disclose 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 modified a protective order in the case to put in place 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 requested comment from the DOJ and from Maxwell’s defense lawyer.
The public is not likely to learn much, if anything, new about Epstein or Maxwell from the unsealed grand jury material.
Englemayer, in his order Tuesday, said that the DOJ’s original motion to unseal the files “misled victims — and the public at large in holding out the Maxwell grand jury materials as essential to the goal of ‘transparency to the American public,’ when in fact the grand jury materials would not add to public knowledge.”
“The materials do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor,” Englemayer wrote in August when he rejected the DOJ’s first bid to unseal the material.
“They 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,” the judge had written. “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.”
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a statement said that the DOJ most now release the Maxwell record.
“The unsealing of Ghislaine Maxwell’s case records is a victory for transparency in the Epstein investigation,” Garcia said. “These files are now part of the Epstein files held by the Department of Justice, and must be turned over to the Oversight Committee in response to our subpoena, and to the public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
Although he granted the DOJ’s request to unseal the materials, the judge slapped prosecutors for again not giving notice to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims before asking that the materials be made public.
“In its two rounds of applications to this Court to disclose records, DOJ, although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims, has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” Engelmayer wrote.
“In applying on November 24, 2025 for leave to release records pursuant to the Act, DOJ again acted without notice to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims,” the judge wrote.
“The Court … were compelled again to direct DOJ forthwith to notify these victims of its latest motion, and to set a deadline for victims’ submissions.
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