A federal judge on Tuesday granted the Justice Department’s request to publicly release grand jury transcripts and other material from Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking case, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime confidant, but he cautioned that people shouldn’t expect to learn much new information from them.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who along with other judges had previously rejected Justice Department unsealing requests before the transparency law was passed, said the materials "do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”

“They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s," Engelmayer wrote. “They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell's crimes.”

Engelmayer, in Manhattan, ruled Tuesday after the Justice Department had asked judges in the wake of the law’s passage last month to lift secrecy orders in Maxwell's and Epstein’s cases that had kept some records under wraps. A request to unseal records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case is pending.

Engelmayer is the second judge to act after the Epstein Files Transparency Act created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings secret. Last week, a Florida federal judge ordered the release of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.

The law, signed by President Donald Trump after months of public and political pressure, requires the Justice Department to provide the public with Epstein-related records by Dec. 19.

AP video by Joseph B. Frederick