A New York judge has ordered the release of material from Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case.
Maxwell, a disgraced British socialite and ex-girlfriend of the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
In a ruling filed on Tuesday, New York Southern District Judge Paul A Engelmayer granted the US Department of Justice’s request to release grand jury transcripts and other material from the 2021 case publicly.
A Florida judge issued a similar order in Epstein’s case last week, granting the department’s request to release transcripts from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into him in the 2000s.
A request to release records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case is still pending.
The news comes as the department has until mid-December to release thousands of documents linked to civil and criminal cases involving Epstein.
Read more: Some who knew Epstein may be scared for what more could still come out
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Donald Trump previously opposed the move, but changed his mind last month after US Congress overwhelmingly voted in favour.
After weeks of attacking Democrats and Republicans for calling for the release of the files, the US president eventually signed the Epstein Transparency Act on 20 November.
It is unclear when the materials on Maxwell’s case will be released, as the judge said that the court would require the US attorney for the Southern District of New York to “personally certify” that material is “rigorously reviewed” before it is released to ensure survivors’ identities are protected.
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However, Sky’s US partner NBC News reported that Mr Engelmayer said in the ruling that care has been taken 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”.
He added that the grand jury materials in the case “would not reveal new information of any consequence”.
The Associated Press also reported that the judge 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.”
It comes after Maxwell’s lawyers wrote to Mr Engelmayer last week, arguing that the release of grand jury materials from her case would “foreclose the possibility of a fair” hearing should she be granted a retrial.
Maxwell was jailed in 2022 for sex trafficking after recruiting young girls for Epstein during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
In October, the US Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s attempts to appeal against her sentence.
That means a presidential pardon from Mr Trump is now her best chance at being freed before her projected release date in 2037.
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Sky’s US partner NBC News reported in November that, according to a whistleblower, Maxwell, 63, was planning to ask the US president to commute her sentence.
Mr Trump said in August, “nobody has asked” him to pardon Maxwell, but said he had “the right to do it”.
