Ghislaine Maxwell's attorneys argue against unsealing grand jury testimony

CBS News

a day ago

Attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein's former associate Ghislaine Maxwell are arguing against the Justice Department's attempt to unseal grand jury testimony against her, writing in a court filing Tuesday that their client "has no choice but to respectfully oppose" the potential release.
"Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not," Maxwell's attorney David Markus wrote in a nine-page filing. "Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain."
Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting, grooming and sexually abusing minors — is challenging her conviction, arguing she should've been covered by a non-prosecution deal that federal prosecutors in Florida offered to Epstein and any co-conspirators almost two decades ago. The Supreme Court indicated it will consider whether to hear Maxwell's case in September.
Her attorneys also wrote that Maxwell has not been given the opportunity to review the grand jury material to assess the documents.
"When Epstein died, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York pivoted and made Maxwell the face of his crimes. She became the scapegoat and the only person the government could put on trial. She was convicted in a media firestorm of false reporting and mischaracterization of evidence," Markus wrote. "Now, with her case pending before the Supreme Court, the government seeks to unseal untested, hearsay-laden grand jury transcripts, which contain statements presented in secret and never challenged by the adversarial process. Maxwell has never been allowed to review those transcripts even though the government did not oppose her recent request to do so."
In a court filing last week, the Justice Department admitted that the grand jury transcripts that it is attempting to unseal from the investigations into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell contain testimony from only two law enforcement officers.
The grand juries that indicted Epstein and Maxwell did not hear direct testimony from any alleged victims, Attorney General Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told a judge in the Southern District of New York in their attempts to unseal the testimony.
In a filing earlier Tuesday, the Justice Department said that the grand jury transcripts it is hoping are unsealed were mostly already made public during Epstein and Maxwell's court proceedings.
"The enclosed, annotated transcripts show that much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony—with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses—was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses," the Justice Department wrote.
The government also has asked for until Aug. 8 to decide whether or not they are going to ask for the grand jury exhibits to be unsealed as well, as those "substantive" exhibits that are not currently in the public record.
Before a different judge in New York this week, two of Epstein's victims asked for restrictions to be put in place to protect the couple's victims, but were unopposed to the transcripts being unsealed.
One victim asked for the judge to "show us all the files with only the necessary redactions!" and "be done with it and allow me/us to heal."
They asked that their attorney be able to review the suggested redactions "as they are the ones who also know the victims, their names, their truths and their stories unlike the United States Government who did not and does not even care to know our truth. They would rather ask a convicted imprisoned sex trafficker/ abuser for information," referring to the Justice Department's two-day interview last month with Maxwell.
Another victim asked for a third-party review of the files before their release, to "ensure that NO victims names or likenesses are revealed through this release. It is imperative with the scrutiny over this media frenzy that the victims are completely and entirely protected."
Last month, a federal judge in Florida denied the Justice Department's request to unseal grand jury material stemming from investigations in 2005 and 2007 into Epstein in the state. That ruling only applied to transcripts of proceedings by federal grand juries that were convened in Florida, and did not apply to the transcripts in New York.