‘Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not': Sex trafficker fights DOJ move to unseal grand jury records

Yahoo

7 hours ago

Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein who after his death was convicted of sex trafficking girls and young women as his accomplice, is opposing the government's requests to unseal the grand jury transcripts in her criminal case.
The Trump administration has been firefighting the fallout from the so-called 'Epstein Files' since the DOJ released a memo last month that contained little new information and concluded no further investigation was warranted into the late sex offender's alleged sex trafficking scheme.
Since the uproar, which has included Republican lawmakers and many from his MAGA base, President Donald Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to make public 'any and all pertinent' grand jury transcripts in the Epstein and Maxwell criminal cases. Experts say these documents only account for a small fraction of the files related to the investigations.
The grand jury transcripts are sealed, and Maxwell's attorneys say she wants to keep them that way as she continues to make appeals to the Trump administration to toss or lessen her prison sentence.
The 63-year-old is serving 20 years after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and other counts for her role in the scheme to sexually exploit and abuse teenage girls and young women with Epstein. Her attorneys have taken an appeal of her conviction to the Supreme Court.
'Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,' Maxwell's attorneys wrote in a Tuesday filing. The public interest in the Epstein case '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.'
The Supreme Court will consider whether to take up her appeal in September. If the judge allowed the transcripts to be unsealed before then, her lawyers argued, the documents could impact any future litigation.
Releasing the raw transcripts would 'inevitably influence any future legal proceeding' and cause 'severe and irrevocable' reputational harm, her attorneys said. Maxwell has never been allowed to review the documents.
Her lawyers asked the court to deny the government's motion to unseal the transcripts.
The judges overseeing the cases previously asked the government to address legal questions before they can consider releasing them.
On Monday, the DOJ gave the judges annotated versions of the transcripts, identifying what information is not publicly available. However in an attached memo, Bondi admitted that 'much' of the information in the transcripts is already in the public domain.
'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,' Bondi wrote.
The attorney general also noted that the government has provided notice about its requests to unseal transcripts to all but one of the victims referenced in the documents. 'The Government still has been unable to contact that remaining victim,' she wrote.
After meeting with the DOJ last week, Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida to the Federal Prison Camp Bryan in southeast Texas. The Florida prison was classified as a minimum security prison, where she was detained in an 'honor dorm' for the best-behaved inmates, and activities included yoga and pilates. The Texas prison mainly houses those convicted of 'white-collar' crimes and minor offenses and boasts a sports field, gym, arts and crafts activities, and a theater program.
Earlier this week, two of Epstein's victims criticized the Trump administration's handling of the case. The victims remained anonymous and filed their letters in the New York case related to the late pedophile.
'The latest attention on the 'Epstein Files', the 'Client List' is OUT OF CONTROL and the ones that are left to suffer are not the high-profile individuals, IT IS THE VICTIMS. Why the lack of concern in handling such sensitive information for the victims sake?' one wrote in a Monday filing.
Another wrote: 'Dear United States, I wish you would have handled and would handle the whole 'Epstein Files' with more respect towards and for the victims. I am not some pawn in your political warfare.'
Furor has mounted over the administration's handling of the case since the Justice Department released its July 6 Epstein memo. In it, the DOJ confirmed that Epstein died by suicide and said there was no evidence to support the existence of a 'client list' of high-profile individuals involved in his alleged sex trafficking.
The memo put to an end months-long anticipation for new Epstein information. In February, Bondi had released 'Phase 1' of the files, a tranche of documents that included mostly publicly available information. She also suggested that the 'client list'was sitting on her desk.
Parts of Trump's MAGA base and prominent lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for heightened transparency around the Epstein files.
Those calls grew louder after the Wall Street Journal published a report last month claiming that the president drew a sexually suggestive 50th birthday card for Epstein in 2003. Trump has vehemently denied making the card and sued the Journal in a $10 billion defamation case.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that DOJ officials told the president in May that his name, among many others, had appeared in the Epstein Files. Being named in the files does not suggest any wrongdoing.
The president's name was reportedly redacted from documents as the administration prepared for their potential public release, Bloomberg reported last week.
The Trump administration has declared itself the 'most transparent' in history.