Ten Days Until Disclosure - The U.S. Justice System Opens the Next Gate in the Epstein and Maxwell Case

The decision came soberly, the struggle, especially for the victims, attorneys and investigative journalists, was a hard and long path, yet its impact extends far: Judge Paul A. Engelmayer has allowed the Justice Department to make public the largely secret investigative materials from the case against Ghislaine Maxwell. We have been conducting our own deep research on this case for a long time and have published many investigations in the magazine. The materials include transcripts, evidence, notes, digital storage devices, financial documents and records from earlier investigations - a collection that reaches into the hundreds or even thousands of pages and has been in the shadows for years. Now they are to be released within ten days, supported by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed just a few weeks ago.

Engelmayer is already the second judge to grant the government's request. In Florida, another judge previously approved the release of a long-sealed federal grand jury proceeding from the 2000s - the proceeding that dissolved into nothing at the time and gave Epstein not a federal indictment but a questionable state-level deal. A request to release the materials from Epstein's 2019 case remains pending. The Justice Department clearly refers to Congress's intent: the public should gain access, in searchable form, not as an unmanageable stack of paper. The transparency act requires publication by December 19. For an affair whose fractures have been visible for years, this is a moment that opens a new chapter - one no longer made of fragments, but of complete records.

The importance becomes clear from how unusual the path was. Three judges - two in New York and one in Florida - had rejected earlier requests by the department because releasing grand jury materials is a highly sensitive step that is normally not considered. Yet the new request was far broader. Eighteen categories of material are to be made accessible, including search warrants, notes from survivor interviews, data from seized devices and files from investigations by the Florida state attorney's office. An archive that is likely to render the course of the investigations more visible than any previous release. Epstein was arrested in July 2019, one month before he was found dead in his cell. The death was officially ruled a suicide. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking two years later and is serving a 20-year sentence. She was transferred in the summer to a lower-security prison in Texas - precisely at the time public interest in her case was reigniting. Her attorney said she takes no substantive position on the release but warned that disclosure could affect her planned habeas petition because a later fair reassessment of the case might be hindered.

The attorneys for the Epstein estate did not comment, while the side of the survivors delivered clear words. Annie Farmer, one of the best-known voices among the survivors, said through her attorney that she sees the danger that a denial of the request could be used to continue withholding crucial information about Epstein's crimes. Her comment reflects the patience survivors have had to show for years while files, authorities and responsibilities shifted back and forth between courts and agencies. In our own matter

That tens of thousands of pages about Epstein and Maxwell have already been released does not diminish the importance of this step. Because many of the new materials come from investigations in Palm Beach and the local state attorney's office, they could provide insights that were previously only partly known. They touch not only on the years 2005 and 2006, but also the decisions that led to Epstein's extraordinarily lenient deal. Last year, a small portion of a 2006 state grand jury transcript was released in Florida. On December 5, additional federal records followed at the request of the government. Now a release is imminent that is larger than anything published before. And it comes at a time when the public's patience is long exhausted and the demand for full transparency is no longer on the edge of the debate, but at its center. The next ten days will show how much light the Justice Department truly intends to shine on this chapter - and which questions, after all these years, may finally be answered.