Attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell warned Wednesday that the Justice Department’s effort to unseal grand jury testimony in her criminal sex trafficking case could severely damage her efforts to secure a retrial, according to a new court filing on Wednesday.
In a one-page filing to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus told the court that the unsealing effort, spurred by the DOJ under a transparency measure President Donald Trump signed last month, would expose “untested and unproven allegations” that could taint any future jury pool. He wrote that releasing the materials “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial” if she ever succeeds in reopening her case.
“Understanding that President Trump has signed the Epstein Transparency Act into law, Ms. Maxwell does not take a position regarding the government’s request to unseal the grand jury transcripts and modify the protective order,” Markus wrote to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, noting his client soon plans to file a habeas petition. This last-ditch legal effort would ask a court to weigh whether her current detention is unlawful.
Maxwell, now 63, is serving a 20-year federal sentence after a jury found her guilty in 2021 of recruiting and grooming underage girls for the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. In the past, she has repeatedly urged judges to keep grand jury records sealed while pursuing appeals, arguing that secrecy rules still apply in active criminal cases.
In an August filing, her lawyers wrote that “Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” insisting that public fascination with the Epstein saga “cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy” while her legal options remain viable.
Federal prosecutors charged Epstein in 2019 with sex-trafficking crimes before he was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. Maxwell was indicted the following year for her role in a scheme that, prosecutors said, spanned a decade and targeted girls as young as 14. During Maxwell’s monthlong trial, survivors testified she groomed them, confiscated their passports, and facilitated sexual abuse at Epstein’s properties across the country.
Her appeal efforts have hit repeated roadblocks. In October, the Supreme Court declined to hear her challenge, a decision her attorney Markus said was “deeply disappointing,” due to what he said were unresolved “serious legal and factual issues.”. Maxwell has also argued that Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida should have shielded her from at least one charge, a legal theory courts have consistently rejected.
Trump’s signature on the new transparency law forces the DOJ to release all Epstein-related investigative files by Dec. 19. That comes after the DOJ claimed in July that “no further disclosure” was appropriate, even as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted two days of interviews with Maxwell at a Florida courthouse near the maximum-security facility where she had been held.
After that interview, Maxwell was abruptly moved without explanation to a minimum-security prison in Texas. She told Blanche she “absolutely never” saw Trump act inappropriately around Epstein and praised the president’s “extraordinary achievement” in winning the White House.
Her attorney has stated that Maxwell would “welcome” a presidential pardon, although she has not formally requested one. Trump has acknowledged that he has the authority to grant pardons when questioned about whether he would commute her sentence or grant a pardon, but has offered no commitment.
Maxwell’s notice on the docket adds a wrinkle to the DOJ’s expedited efforts to release grand jury filings in Epstein-related cases, which previously were rejected by three separate judges earlier this year.
Another area of intrigue concerning the full transparency of Epstein-related documents surrounds recently unsealed court filings that revealed there are more than 250 emails between Goldman Sachs attorney Kathryn Ruemmler and Epstein, which his estate’s lawyers say are protected by attorney-client privilege, according to a Business Insider report published on Wednesday. The filings revealed that Ruemmler digitally communicated with Epstein about lawsuits involving women who accused him of sexual abuse and others who sought to reverse his 2008 plea deal, raising questions about whether she ever did legal work for him.
Meanwhile, Epstein’s estate filed a one-page notice to his 2019 New York criminal sex trafficking case docket on Wednesday, informing the U.S. that the estate takes “no position” on the government’s motion to unseal grand jury records related to that case.
EPSTEIN FILES LIKELY TO BE INCOMPLETE DUE TO ACTIVE DOJ INQUIRY IN NEW YORK
The department has not defined the volume of unreleased Epstein documents, and it is unclear to what extent the filings will include redactions or whether some documents will be withheld. But Maxwell’s notice, if taken into consideration by Engelmayer, could threaten to reduce the scope of records sought for public release.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has vowed compliance with the new law, touting the release of more than 33,000 pages of Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee, which has been conducting its separate inquiry into the handling of Epstein’s cases over the years.
