(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A U.S. judge has ordered depositions to be unsealed in a lawsuit against convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell—a move that’s expected to reveal the identities more than 150 power brokers named in the civil litigation.
U.S. Judge Loretta Preska handed down her order Monday in the case of Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for her role in the sex-trafficking network.
Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts) alleged that Maxwell and Epstein groomed her, starting at 16 years old, for Epstein’s “pleasure, including lessons in Epstein’s preferences during oral sex.” Shesettled with Maxwell in 2017, but many records from the case are still sealed.
Judge Preska set a Jan. 1 timeline for the records from the Giuffre/Maxwell case to be unsealed. Parties named in the records can still object.
The judge didn’t order all the records to be unsealed. Some, she said, would reveal the identities of minor victims.
One document, for example, identifies a minor victim who has not spoken publicly about Epstein or Maxwell and who has maintained his or her privacy, according to Judge Preska.
But most of the names have already been discussed in other court cases or media reports, and therefore those documents will be made entirely public.
Those likely named in the records include former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Harvard Lawyer Alan Dershowitz—the latter who recently had a lawsuit against him dropped by Giuffre.
Meanwhile, Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of conspiring with Epstein in 2021. Epstein was reportedly found dead in his prison cell in August 2019—allegeldy of suicide, though Maxwell recently said she doubts that.
“I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked, and I wondered, ‘How did this happen?’ Because I was sure he was going to appeal, and I was sure he was covered by the non-prosecution agreement,” Maxwell told British reporter Jeremy Kyle of TalkTV.
The non-prosecution agreement referenced by Maxwell was a sweetheart deal Epstein signed with the Department of Justice in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18. Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was reportedly allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day.
After the Miami Herald published an expose on Epstein and his non-prosecution agreement in late 2018, Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He was found dead in his jail cell about a month later.
Epstein’s lawyers have contested the claim that he killed himself. Skeptics point to malfunctioning surveillance cameras, sleeping guards, and broken bones in Epstein’s neck as indications that his death was something other than suicide.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
