(NewsNation) — A Palm Beach County judge Monday released grand jury records, which included hundreds of documents and audio recordings, from the 2006 investigation against Jeffrey Epstein.
The records have remained under seal for 16 years. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an order to release the files by July 1, reported the Palm Beach Post, which sued for their release in 2019.
Epstein, a millionaire known for associating with high-profile personalities, became the subject of a police investigation in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.
Once he was arrested, multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, came forward telling police that Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.
While Palm Beach police charged Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor in 2006, the state attorney at the time, Barry Krischer, made the unusual decision of sending the case to a grand jury.
The grand jury heard from only one accuser and indicted Epstein with one count of solicitation of prostitution. Accusations from other victims, many of whom were minors, are not reflected in the indictment.
Krischer’s office never spoke with any of the victims, according to state attorney documents, and once Epstein’s high-profile defense attorneys became involved, his office quit communicating regularly with police, reported the Palm Beach Post.
Questions have swirled for nearly two decades about why Epstein was charged with relatively minor offenses and why the case went to a grand jury.
Among the records released Monday was the testimony of an underage girl who described being allegedly assaulted by Epstein.
He was re-arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges in New York but was found dead in his cell by suicide a month after his arrest.
NewsNation’s Urja Sinha and Devan Markham contributed to this story.
