Legal Fight Brewing as Judge in Epstein Case Considers Release of Documents Containing ‘Hundreds’ of New Names

FILE – This July 27, 2006 arrest file photo made available by the Palm Beach, Fla., Sheriff’s Office shows Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, has been arrested in New York on sex trafficking charges. Two law enforcement officials said Epstein was taken into federal custody Saturday, July 6, 2019, on charges involving sex-trafficking allegations that date to the 2000s. (AP Photo/Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, File)

Bloomberg reports that District Court Judge Loretta Preska “is considering how to carry out a ruling by the federal appeals court in New York that she must consider unsealing some of the documents.” It is the opinion of the appeals court that “such filings should be made public.” These documents contain hundreds of additional names in a 2015 defamation case against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The case was filed by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre claimed she’d been recruited by Maxwell that Maxwell had “defamed her by calling her a liar.”

At Wednesday’s hearing in Manhattan, Maxwell’s attorney, Jeffrey Pagliuca, told Judge Preska that amongst the sealed records is an address book with about 1,000 names. Pagliuca said these documents  were not among the 2,000 pages of material released on August 9th, the day before Epstein’s death. He argued that these records “should remain sealed because they weren’t entered into evidence before the case settled.” The 2015 case was settled in 2017 just before it was set to go to trial.

The attorney representing the alleged victims, Sigrid McCrawly, said that, with the exception of social security numbers, medical information and the names of minors, all of the records associated with the defamation case should be unsealed. She noted that, “Anybody whose information is in the documents would be notified so they could object.”

Apparently, the potential release of additional names has some people worried. On Tuesday, one of the individuals named in the records, identified only as “John Doe,” has requested that the records remain sealed or that his name be redacted.

At the hearing, Judge Preska said she would “consider the documents in batches.” This process could take weeks or months.

Following Epstein’s apparent suicide last month, the case against him was dismissed. It’s unknown if his alleged victims will take legal action against Maxwell or any of the men involved in the case. My guess is they will at the very least go after Maxwell.

In a way, Maxwell’s crimes were even worse than Epstein’s, for it was her responsibility to procure the girls who would service him. Several of Maxwell’s acquaintances spoke to Vanity Fair’s Vanessa Grigoriadis in August. From their comments, a picture begins to emerge of a soulless woman willing to do almost anything to hold onto her man, the late, depraved and ruthless Jeffrey Epstein.

According to a source, Maxwell would visit spas and speak to the shower room attendants and show up at trailer parks searching for young, beautiful girls. She would claim she had a phone job to offer, telling them “you’ll make lots of money, meet everyone, and I’ll change your life.” The reality of the situation was that she was conning them into lives of degradation and desperation. But Maxwell could not have cared less.

The source said, “When I asked what she thought of the underage girls, she looked at me and said, ‘they’re nothing, these girls. They are trash.’”

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