A federal judge has ordered grand jury documents from the case of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to be unsealed after President Donald Trump signed a measure that compels the release of all materials tied to investigations into her associate Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, who is who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was found guilty of recruiting and grooming young women and girls, did not fight against the renewed push to unseal the documents, but she had warned that the public release of grand jury files from her case could compromise her long-shot attempt to get a new trial.
Victims of Maxwell and Epstein urged the court to unseal the files but sought assurance that their identities and privacy wouldn’t be compromised.
In his order on Tuesday, New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer said their concerns “regrettably have a basis in fact,” after the Department of Justice failed to give notice to victims about the government’s motions to unseal the documents earlier this year.
“DOJ, although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims, has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve,” the judge wrote.
Victims’ letters to the court “widely expressed distress at the lack of notice given to them by DOJ … and alarm that the grand jury records DOJ would release, if authorized to do so, would invade their privacy,” Engelmayer added.
“The motion itself misled victims — and the public at large — in holding out the Maxwell grand jury materials as essential to the goal of ‘transparency to the American public,’ when in fact the grand jury materials would not add to public knowledge,” he wrote.
Last month, Trump reluctantly agreed to sign a measure approved by Congress that compels the Justice Department to release all investigative materials from the Epstein case in its possession. Those documents face a December 19 deadline for their public release.
But those files do not include materials reviewed by grand juries that mulled indictments against Epstein or Maxwell.
Last week, a federal judge in Florida ordered the release of grand jury materials from an abandoned case against Epstein from 2005 and 2007. The order from District Judge Rodney Smith, a Trump appointee, did not attach a deadline.
Another judge is considering a separate request to unseal grand jury documents in Epstein’s case in New York, where he died in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Maxwell was indicted in 2020 for crimes associated with Epstein’s decades-long scheme to recruit young women and girls — some as young as 14 years old — then sexually abuse them.
From 1994 to 2004, Maxwell and Epstein worked together to recruit young girls and entice them to travel to Epstein’s properties, according to prosecutors. During a monthlong trial in 2021, survivors testified in Manhattan federal court that Maxwell had groomed them, taken their passports, and sexually abused them.
In October, the Supreme Court denied Maxwell’s appeal after she asked the nation’s highest court to review whether prosecutors fairly brought the case against her.
Maxwell’s lawyers had argued in court documents that Epstein’s agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida, which included a pledge not to prosecute him or potential co-conspirators, should apply to one of the counts in Maxwell’s case.
In July, the Justice Department determined “no further disclosure” in the Epstein case “would be appropriate or warranted.” But in an apparent attempt to suppress criticism surrounding the decision, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell over two days at a Florida courthouse close to the maximum security prison where she was incarcerated.
Maxwell agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, and was suddenly moved to a minimum security prison in Texas.
In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she “absolutely never” saw Trump behave inappropriately with anyone in Epstein’s circle and praised the president for his “extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.” She also said she “liked him.”
Attorneys for Annie Farmer, who testified under oath that Maxwell groomed and assaulted her when she was a teenager, wrote to the judges overseeing the cases last week week, warning that any denial of the motions to unseal the documents “may be used by others as a pretext or excuse for continuing to withhold crucial information concerning Epstein’s crimes.”
“Epstein’s victims have been denied justice for far too long by multiple government administrations of both parties,” they wrote.
