NEW YORK (AP) — As the Justice Department gets ready to release its files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, a court battle over sealed documents in Maxwell’s criminal case is offering clues about what could be in those files.
Government lawyers asked a judge on Wednesday to allow the release of a wide range of records from Maxwell’s case, including search warrants, financial records, survivor interview notes, electronic device data and material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida.
Those records, among others, are subject to secrecy orders that the Justice Department wants lifted as it works to comply with a new law mandating the public release of Epstein and Maxwell investigative materials.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last week.
The Justice Department submitted the list a day after U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in New York ordered the government to specify what materials it plans to publicly release from Maxwell’s case.
The government said it is conferring with survivors and their lawyers and that it will redact records to ensure protection of survivors' identities and prevent the dissemination of sexualized images.
“In summary, the Government is in the process of identifying potentially responsive materials” that are required to be disclosed under the law, “categorizing them and processing them for review,” the department said.
The four-page filing bears the names of the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Also Wednesday, a judge weighing a similar request for materials from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case gave the department until Monday to provide detailed descriptions the records it wants made public. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said he will review the material in private before deciding.
In August, Berman and Engelmayer denied the department's requests to unseal grand jury transcripts and other material from Epstein and Maxwell's cases, ruling that such disclosures are rarely, if ever, allowed.
The department asked the judges this week to reconsider, arguing in court filings that the new law requires the government to “publish the grand jury and discovery materials” from the cases. The law requires the release of Epstein-related files in a searchable format by Dec. 19.
Epstein was a millionaire money manager known for socializing with celebrities, politicians and other powerful men. He killed himself in jail a month after his 2019 arrest. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking for luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
In initial filings this week, the Justice Department characterized the material it wants unsealed in broad terms, describing it as "grand jury transcripts and exhibits.” Engelmayer ordered the government to file a letter describing the materials “in sufficient detail to meaningfully inform victims” what it plans to make public.
Engelmayer did not preside over Maxwell’s trial, but was assigned to the case after the trial judge, Alison J. Nathan, was elevated to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tens of thousands of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell have already been released over the years, including through civil lawsuits, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
In its filing Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 18 categories of material that it is seeking to release from Maxwell's case, including reports, photographs, videos and other materials from police in Palm Beach, Florida, and the U.S. attorney’s office there, both of which investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s.
Last year, a Florida judge ordered the release of about 150 pages of transcripts from a state grand jury that investigated Epstein in 2006. Last week, citing the new law, the Justice Department moved to unseal transcripts from a federal grand jury that also investigated Epstein.
That investigation ended in 2008 with a then-secret arrangement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to a state prostitution charge. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program. The request to unseal the transcripts is pending.
FILE — Audrey Strauss, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaks during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her alleged role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein, July 2, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Over two dozen families from one of the few remaining Palestinian Bedouin villages in the central West Bank have packed up and fled their homes in recent days, saying harassment by Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts nearby has grown unbearable.
The village, Ras Ein el-Auja, was originally home to some 700 people from more than 100 families that have lived there for decades.
Twenty-six families already left on Thursday, scattering across the territory in search of safer ground, say rights groups. Several other families were packing up and leaving on Sunday.
“We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” said Nayef Zayed, a resident, as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures.
Israel's military and the local settler governing body in the area did not respond to requests for comment.
Other residents pledged to stay put for the time being. That makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area, said Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents.
She said that mounting settler violence has already emptied neighboring Palestinian hamlets in the dusty corridor of land stretching from Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east.
The area is part of the 60% of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control under interim peace accords signed in the 1990s. Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023, over 2,000 Palestinians — at least 44 entire communities — have been expelled by settler violence in the area, B'Tselem says.
The turning point for the village came in December, when settlers put up an outpost about 50 meters (yards) from Palestinian homes on the northwestern flank of the village, said Michaeli and Sam Stein, an activist who has been living in the village for a month.
Settlers strolled easily through the village at night. Sheep and laundry went missing. International activists had to begin escorting children to school to keep them safe.
“The settlers attack us day and night, they have displaced us, they harass us in every way” said Eyad Isaac, another resident. “They intimidate the children and women.”
Michaeli said she’s witnessed settlers walk around the village at night, going into homes to film women and children and tampering with the village’s electricity.
The residents said they call the police frequently to ask for help — but it seldom arrives. Settlement expansion has been promoted by successive Israeli governments over nearly six decades. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which has placed settler leaders in senior positions, has made it a top priority.
That growth has been accompanied by a spike in settler violence, much of it carried out by residents of unauthorized outposts. These outposts often begin with small farms or shepherding that are used to seize land, say Palestinians and anti-settlement activists. United Nations officials warn the trend is changing the map of the West Bank, entrenching Israeli presence in the area.
Some 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Their presence is viewed by most of the international community as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state.
For now, displaced families of the village have dispersed between other villages near the city of Jericho and near Hebron further south, said residents. Some sold their sheep and are trying to move into the cities.
Others are just dismantling their structures without knowing where to go.
"Where will we go? There’s nowhere. We’re scattered,” said Zayed, the resident, “People’s situation is bad. Very bad.”
An Israeli settler herds his flock near his outpost beside the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the West Bank, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
A Palestinian resident of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank burns trash, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian children play in the West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
