Third federal judge grants request to unseal Jeffrey Epstein-related court records

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge on Wednesday approved the unsealing of documents from the investigation and criminal prosecution of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The decision from Manhattan judge Richard M. Berman comes one day after a different New York judge approved the release of records in the case against Epstein’s associate, Ghislane Maxwell, and one week after a third judge in Florida also approved the release of investigative materials there.

The trove of documents now set to be released could provide an inside look into how the Justice Department investigated and prosecuted Epstein’s alleged underworld of pedophilia, though it is not yet clear how much of the evidence will be new to the public or when it will be made available.

Epstein was indicted by a grand jury on sex trafficking charges in 2019. One month later, Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It was ruled a suicide.

The three judge’s based their decisions on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last month. In his brief ruling Wednesday, Berman said that the law requires the documents to be released with appropriate redactions to protect victims’ identities and information.

In an earlier request to unseal records in the two New York cases, prosecutors said there was one witness, an FBI agent, who testified before the Epstein grand jury. Two witnesses – the FBI agent and a NYPD detective – testified before the Maxwell grand jury, the prosecutors said.

They added that some information heard by the Maxwell grand jury ultimately became public during Maxwell’s trial.

At the time, Berman noted the grand jury transcripts and exhibits were a small part of the investigations.

“The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation information and materials in the hand of the Department of Justice,” he wrote in August.

This story was updated to include additional details.

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