Ghislaine Maxwell on September 20, 2013 in New York Metropolis.
Laura Cavanaugh | Getty Pictures
A federal choose in New York on Monday rejected a request by the Justice Division to unseal grand jury transcripts associated to the prison investigation of Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted procurer for infamous intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Decide Paul Engelmayer, in his ruling, scoffed on the Justice Division’s rationale for unsealing the Maxwell grand jury transcripts.
“Its whole premise — that the Maxwell grand jury supplies would deliver to mild significant new details about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Authorities’s investigation into them — is demonstrably false,” Engelmayer wrote in his determination in U.S. District Courtroom in Manhattan.
The Justice Division sought the unsealing of grand jury materials associated to Maxwell and Epstein after harsh criticism of the Trump administration’s determination to not publicly launch the investigative file on Epstein.
A federal choose in Florida on July 23 denied the division’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts a couple of probe of Epstein in that state by federal prosecutors within the mid-2000s.
The Justice Division’s request earlier than one other federal choose in Manhattan to unseal grand jury transcripts associated to Epstein’s later indictment there may be nonetheless pending.
Engelmayer, in his determination Monday on the Maxwell-related transcripts, quoted a 1973 authorized ruling, which mentioned that “the coverage that ‘proceedings earlier than a grand jury shall typically stay secret’ is ‘older than our Nation itself.’ “
Engelmayer additionally mentioned that not one of the arguments that the Justice Division cited for unsealing the transcripts met one of many exceptions authorizing the disclosure of grand jury supplies allowed by the federal appeals court docket circuit that features New York.
The choose additionally steered that the Justice Division’s request was extra about public relations than about having beforehand unknown details about Epstein and Mawell unsealed for the primary time.
“The Courtroom’s overview confirmed that unsealing the grand jury supplies wouldn’t reveal
new data of any consequence,” Engelmayer wrote.
“A member of the general public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury supplies don’t contribute something to public data, may conclude that the Authorities’s movement for his or her unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ however at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure however on the phantasm of such,” he wrote.
“Opposite to the Authorities’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is just not a matter of great historic or public curiosity,” Engelmayer wrote. “Removed from it. It consists of garden-variety abstract testimony by two regulation enforcement brokers.”
Epstein was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan after it heard testimony from an FBI agent about his alleged intercourse trafficking of underage women. He killed himself in August 2019 in a federal jail, weeks after being arrested in that case.
A second grand jury in Manhattan later indicted Maxwell on costs of grooming underage women to be sexually abused by Epstein. She was convicted at trial in late 2021 and is now serving a 20-year jail sentence.
That is breaking information. Please refresh for updates.