Ghislaine Maxwell’s Attorneys Move to Seal Controversial Sexually Charged Deposition

Iesha November 13, 2020 News Leave a comment

On Thursday, attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell, an alleged co-conspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, filed an objection seeking to block the release of a controversial sexually charged deposition in a settled civil lawsuit.

U.S. Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the objection was filed as part of a broader objection to the proposed timeline for unsealing additional documents in a records-release lawsuit brought by the Miami Herald.

The Thursday filing seeks to block the release of a July 2016 deposition given by Maxwell in a civil lawsuit involving Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Last month, Preska released a long transcript of Maxwell’s deposition from April 2016. The British socialite was obstructive, and she refused to answer questions about her sexual behavior and that of Jeffrey Epstein. Since she refused to answer the questions fueled from Epstein’s victims, the judge ordered Maxwell to sit in months later for a follow-up deposition.

This summer, Maxwell was arrested on federal sex abuse charges in connection to her association with Epstein, who had palatial homes in Palm Beach, the Virgin Islands, New Mexico, and Manhattan. Lawyers say that with the release of the second deposition, something could damage Maxwell’s chances of a fair trial.

In the filing by Laura A. Menninger, she said, “There can be no doubt that matters concerning Ms. Maxwell’s case have been excessively and extensively reported. The press, the government, and the plaintiff have made every effort to try Ms. Maxwell as a proxy for the now-deceased Mr. Epstein.” She added, “The prejudice caused by the flood of coverage that comes with every new unsealing event, in this case, cannot be overstated.”

Those same arguments were made unsuccessfully to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York when Maxwell challenged Preska’s decision to unseal the depositions. Appellate judges held that Preska did not violate any judicial norms in reaching her decision that there was a presumption of public access to court documents. The lawsuit was fueled by the public interest in Epstein following the Miami Herald’s Perversion of Justice series.

Maxwell’s lawyers asked Preska not to release depositions from the two non-parties that were referenced as Doe 1 and Doe 2. The Lawyers for these two non-parties objected to their names being released, but they didn’t have any furthers objections before the Nov. 4 deadline.

The filing said, “Although they did not thereafter submit any objection, this Court has already ruled that ‘an objection by Does 1 and 2 to the release of their names is itself an objection to unsealing,’ ” which challenged the unsealing orders that were already settled by Preska and the appeals court.

Maxwell was arrested on July 2 in New Hampshire on four counts of sex trafficking of a minor and two counts of perjury, which later stemmed from the testimony she gave in the civil lawsuit involving Giuffre that was settled in 2017. The criminal charges involve alleged recruiting and grooming of underage girls for Epstein from 1994 to 1997. She is alleged to have participated in the abuse of one of the girls. Maxwell remains in a New York jail awaiting federal trial.

Her attorneys indicated in the filing that they planned to challenge how the federal prosecutors came into possession of the depositions from the civil lawsuit in the first place.

Maxwell’s lawyers previously suggested without any evidence that Giuffre’s attorneys might have turned over the depositions in violation of a protective order in the civil suit. That was disputed when federal prosecutors indicated that they obtained the depositions after asking two courts for access, and only on complied.

She has also sued Epstein’s estate, claiming that he promised to pay her legal bills, which he did, up until the day he died in August 2019. The estate claims that no such deal was ever made.

Menninger’s filing on behalf of Maxwell also repeated earlier arguments that the information should be kept under seal because it could be relevant to Maxwell’s criminal trial.

She said, “The Sealed Items contain information relevant to the Criminal Action that may or may not later is determined inadmissible in that trial.”