New York — One of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell The United States’ most prominent defendants urged judges on Wednesday to respond to a Justice Department request to unseal records of federal sex trafficking cases, saying: “Only transparency is likely to lead to justice.”
Annie Farmer weighed in through her attorney, Sigrid S. McCauley, after the justices asked for input from victims before ruling on whether the records were valid. It must be public Under a new law obligating the government Open his files On the late financier and long-time close friend, who sexually abused young women and girls for decades.
Farmers and other victims fought for the passage of the law known as Epstein introduces the Transparency Act. The president signed it last month Donald TrumpIt forces the Department of Justice, the FBI and federal prosecutors to release by December 19 the massive amounts of material they collected during the investigations into the Epstein case.
The Justice Department last week asked Manhattan federal judges Richard M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer lifted secrecy orders on grand jury transcripts and other materials from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case and a wide range of records from the 2021 Maxwell case, including search warrants, financial records and notes from interviews with victims.
“Nothing in these proceedings should stand in the way of their victory or provide a backdoor means for continuing to cover up the worst sex trafficking operations in history,” McCauley wrote in a letter to the justices.
The lawyer criticized the government for failing to prosecute anyone else in Epstein and Maxwell’s orbit.
She asked the justices to ensure that the orders they issue do not prevent the Justice Department from publishing other Epstein-related materials, adding that Farmer is “concerned” that any denial could be used “as a pretext or excuse” to withhold information.
Epstein, a millionaire money manager known for his social interactions with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the academic elite, He killed himself in prison A month after his arrest in 2019.
It was Maxwell He was convicted in 2021 by a federal sex trafficking jury for helping recruit some of Epstein’s minor victims and participating in some of the abuse. she He is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
In a court filing on Wednesday, Maxwell’s attorney again said she was preparing a habeas corpus petition in an attempt to overturn her conviction. The attorney, David Marcus, first mentioned the habeas corpus petition in court papers in August when she fought the Justice Department’s initial attempt to unseal her case records. The Supreme Court in October refused to hear Maxwell’s appeal.
Marcus said in a filing on Wednesday that while Maxwell is now “not taking a position” in the wake of passage of the transparency law, doing so “would create undue bias so severe that it would preclude the possibility of a fair retrial” if the habeas corpus petition is successful.
Marcus said the records “contain untested and unproven allegations.”
Engelmayer, who is considering whether to release records from Maxwell’s case, has given her and the victims until Wednesday to respond to the Justice Department’s request. The government must respond to their requests by December 10. The judge said he would rule “immediately thereafter.”
Berman, who presided over the Epstein case, ordered the victims and Epstein’s estate to respond by Wednesday and gave the government until December 8 to respond to those requests. Berman said he would make “every effort to resolve this proposal immediately.”
Lawyers for Epstein’s estate said in a letter to Berman on Wednesday that the family takes no position on the Justice Department’s request for disclosure. The lawyers noted that the government had committed to making appropriate redactions of victims’ personal identifying information.
Last week, lawyers for some of the victims complained that the House Oversight Committee failed to redact or redact some of their names from tens of thousands of pages of documents related to Epstein that it released in recent months.
“Transparency cannot come at the expense of the privacy, safety, and protection of victims of sexual assault and sex trafficking, especially those survivors who have already suffered repeatedly,” attorney Brad Edwards wrote.