By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge granted the U.S. Justice Department’s move to unseal grand jury documents in the case involving Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is in prison for sex trafficking, a court filing on Tuesday said.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer cited a recent law passed by Congress in issuing his order and opinion, which he said also allowed the department to modify a related protective order issued in July 2020.
The order followed a similar one from a judge in Florida on Friday that allowed for the unsealing of documents in a sex trafficking case against Epstein.
The Justice Department asked the judges to unseal the records after the Republican-controlled Congress passed a bill requiring the Attorney General to release all unclassified files related to its investigations of Epstein and his associate Maxwell, who is in prison for sex trafficking.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Katharine Jackson, and Jan Wolfe; editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama )
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