Judge unseals documents about accused Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell
A federal judge on Thursday unsealed civil court documents
related to Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite arrested earlier in the
month on charges of aiding the sexual abuse of minor girls by the now-dead
investor Jeffrey Epstein.
But Judge Loretta Preska postponed the release of the
documents in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by up to one week to give
Maxwell’s lawyers time to file an appeal of her decision.
Preska reportedly said during a hearing that the public’s
right to see the documents “far outweighed” Maxwell’s right to avoid being
embarrassed by their contents.
The documents include a more-than-400-page deposition that
Maxwell gave during litigation in the civil case, as well as depositions of
several accusers of Epstein.
Maxwell’s lawyers reportedly argued during a hearing
Thursday that they had “grave concerns about our client’s ability to seek and
receive an impartial and fair trial and jury due to the intense media scrutiny
around anything that is unsealed.”
The documents are part of a now-settled civil case filed by
Virginia Giuffre, who has accused Maxwell of recruiting her for Epstein’s abuse
years ago, when she was 17 years old.
At the time, Giuffre was working as an assistant in the spa
of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Giuffre has said Maxwell directed her to have sex with
Prince Andrew of Britain, a then-friend of Epstein’s, as well as with Epstein’s
lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
Both of those men deny Giuffre’s claims.
The Miami Herald, whose investigation of Epstein led to his
arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges in July 2019, had sued to win
release of the documents.
Epstein, 66, died last August in a Manhattan jail while
awaiting trial in what authorities ruled was a suicide by hanging.
Shortly before his death, a federal appeals court ordered
the release of more than 2,000 pages of documents from Maxwell’s civil case.
Among those documents was a deposition of Giuffre, in which
she says that Maxwell directed her to have sex with former Senate Majority
Leader George Mitchell, ex-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, hedge funder Glenn
Dubin, late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling company founder Jean Luc-Brunel,
the owner of a large hotel chain, and another prince besides Andrew.
All of the living men named by Giuffre have denied her
claim.
A former friend of Trump and President Bill Clinton, Epstein
was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and owned luxurious residential
properties on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Palm Beach, New Mexico and on a
private island he owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
He previously served a 13-month jail term in the late 2000s
after pleading guilty to Florida state criminal charges that included paying
for sex from an underage girl.
His former girlfriend and property manager Maxwell was arrested in early July in New Hampshire.
Prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office said
Maxwell in the mid-1990s helped identify and groom underage girls who later
were sexually abused by Epstein, and also lied about her conduct under oath
during civil litigation. One of the three accusers in the case was just 14
years old at the time of the alleged abuse.
Maxwell, 58, is being held without bail in a Brooklyn
federal jail.
A judge last week said that there was a high risk that
Maxwell would flee to avoid prosecution because of her wealth, lack of
substantial connections to the United States, and citizenship in France, which
does not extradite its citizens who are accused of crimes.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty in her case.
On Tuesday, Trump offered encouraging words for Maxwell at a
White House press conference.
“I just wish her well, frankly,” Trump told reporters,
adding that he had “met her numerous times over the years.”
Trump was criticized for that remark by a number of people,
including Anthony Scaramucci, the financier who briefly served as Trump’s White
House communications director in 2018.
“She has the goods on him. He is signaling ‘please don’t
talk,’” Scaramucci wrote in a tweet about Trump and Maxwell.
Comments
Post a Comment