A US judge has ruled all material related to the 2019 sex-trafficking investigation into the paedophile should be released
It was the first test of the new law demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files – and the result was a dramatic victory.
This week a US judge ruled that all material related to the sex-trafficking investigation of the late paedophile in 2019 should be released.
Two other judges have already ruled that documents related to Epstein’s “madam”, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the 2006 investigation into the financier, should also be released.
In all three cases, requests to make the files public were rejected, but after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last month by Donald Trump, judges changed their minds.
The grand jury material will now be added to the extensive tranche of information and pages of documents to be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
It’s a huge moment for Epstein survivors and the wider public who want to know the truth about the paedophile, who was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Officials found he had committed suicide.
The ruling on the files comes a week before the deadline for the Department of Justice to release all the material it has related to the Epstein case.
But the decisions by judges in three federal cases is significant because they will operate on their own timetable, not that of the DOJ.
While Attorney General Pam Bondi has promised to abide by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, having judges run their own unsealing processes provides a vital backstop to ensure that everything gets out and that no one can be blamed for stalling the release of information.
Victims who I have spoken to, however, have little faith that the US government will do the right thing.
They have more faith in the judiciary, and in particular Judge Richard Berman, who oversaw the Epstein case in 2019 and was the third judge of the three to rule for unsealing.
He is the same judge who held an extraordinary final hearing in the Epstein case after the financier’s death, where his victims were allowed to speak in court about the damage he had wrought on their lives.
Judge Berman appears to understand the need to protect the victims’ privacy, something that has not been the case with the DOJ so far.
In a letter filed with him last month, Brad Edwards, who has represented 300 Epstein victims in 11 countries, said documents already released by Congress – yet another separate process for releasing files – had caused his clients “significant emotional distress”.
Victims’ names had not been redacted, leading to some of them being stopped by reporters in the street, in one case when she was with her nine-year-old son.
Edwards’ scorching letter described the DOJ’s unsealing process as the “illusion of full disclosure” and a “distraction” from the real work that needed to be done.
Against that breakdown in trust, the fact federal judges are going to be overseeing their own process is reassuring
However, if unsealing is done right it will take time and could be frustrating. Thousands of files have already been made public related to a defamation lawsuit filed against Maxwell by the late Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim.
While the case was settled in 2017, media organisations fought for two years to unseal the case files and the first tranche landed in 2019, shortly after Epstein’s arrest.
They were a bombshell, and included a draft of Giuffre’s memoir, lengthy depositions and flight records that revealed just who Epstein was flying on his private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express”.
Subsequent releases took years to roll out because anyone who was named in the papers had a chance to object and be heard in court. The redaction process took up an enormous amount of the court’s time, something that will be likely to happen with the forthcoming files too.
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If the DOJ does try to keep to the 30-day deadline for releasing its Epstein documents – a deadline which falls on 19 December – then it runs the risk of exposing his victims yet again.
So far it seems messy, and in a recent court filing, DOJ lawyers said they were still working on a master list of victims and still working on their redaction system.
As Edwards put it in his letter: “These women are not political pawns. They are mothers, wives and daughters. They are human beings who have the right to be treated with dignity and respect and to feel safe and protected by our country, which has failed them time and time again.”
