US Court Clears Public Release of Jeffrey Epstein Grand Jury Files

A US court on Friday granted the Department of Justice permission to publicly release grand jury records related to Jeffrey Epstein. Making the Epstein case files public had long been a major demand.

Epstein was infamous for trafficking and sexually abusing numerous underage girls. He was first arrested in 2006. In 2008, after a trial in one of the cases, he was found guilty. He faced multiple cases alleging he abused hundreds of minors. While awaiting trial in other cases, he was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019, in what authorities described as a suicide by hanging.

In 2003, Epstein and Donald Trump were known to be acquaintances. A controversial note and photo—described as an obscene birthday greeting that Trump had allegedly sent to Epstein—had also surfaced earlier. A special investigation by the House Oversight Committee revealed thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein’s estate. A scanned copy of a controversial birthday book titled “The First Fifty Years” was among the materials. The book contains ten sections, including a foreword written by Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

According to reports, Bill Clinton, billionaire Leon Black, Harvard Law School professor and former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, former UK ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, and businessman Les Wexner were among those who had contributed congratulatory messages to this book.