A Manhattan federal judge has ordered the unsealing of secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 sex trafficking investigation, marking the latest in a series of court decisions to release documents from the case. US District Judge Richard M Berman on Wednesday reversed his earlier decision to keep the materials under wraps, following similar rulings in New York and Florida last week.
The breakthrough comes after President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, which compels the Justice Department to release all investigative records by December 19. The law effectively overrode the conventional wall of grand jury secrecy that had kept the documents sealed. Around 70 pages of grand jury materials from Berman's order, plus records from Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 trial and Epstein's 2006 Florida conviction, are now authorised for release.
It is unclear when the materials will be made public. Justice Department attorneys said they will work with relevant US Attorney's Offices to make appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information. Judge Berman previously cautioned that the materials have limited revelatory value and 'pale in comparison' with the files held by the FBI.
Trump, who was a longtime associate of Epstein from the 1990s through the early 2000s, earlier this year ordered the release of some material, most of it already public, disappointing critics and prominent allies including Marjorie Taylor Greene. The President repeatedly called the Epstein files a Democrat 'hoax' in recent months despite campaigning on a pledge to release the documents once in office.
Epstein was indicted on sex trafficking charges in July 2019 but was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the following month while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 after prosecutors presented evidence that she procured girls as young as 14 for abuse by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year sentence in Florida.
