(NewsNation) —A Florida federal judge on Friday ordered the public release of grand jury transcripts tied to the federal sex-trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said that the recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act trumped a federal rule that prohibited the release of matters before a grand jury.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed by President Donald Trump last month and officially directs the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to disclose all unclassified records and documents collected during the Epstein investigations by December 19.
The Florida case from his 2006-2007 grand jury probe is one of three separate Epstein-related cases that the Justice Department has moved to unseal. The others include records from Epstein’s 2019 federal sex-trafficking case in New York and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 New York sex-trafficking prosecution.
The New York requests are still pending as the Justice Department faces a Monday deadline to make its final filing.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.