NEW YORK, Aug 11 (Reuters) – A U.S. choose denied on Monday the Justice Division’s bid to unseal information from the grand jury that indicted the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell on intercourse trafficking prices, writing that the information didn’t reply lingering questions from the general public about their crimes or Epstein’s dying.
Manhattan-based U.S. District Decide Paul Engelmayer, who reviewed the transcripts of the witness testimony heard by the grand jury and different proof the panel noticed, wrote that the federal government’s assertion that the supplies would reveal significant new details about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes was “demonstrably false.”
“A member of the general public aware of the Maxwell trial report who reviewed the grand jury supplies that the Authorities proposes to unseal would thus study subsequent to nothing new,” Engelmayer wrote.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year jail sentence after her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking prices. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on sex-trafficking prices. He had pleaded not responsible.
Neither the Justice Division nor a lawyer for Maxwell instantly responded to requests for remark.
Epstein socialized with the rich and highly effective, and his dying in jail sparked conspiracy theories that different distinguished individuals had been concerned in his alleged crimes and that he was murdered. The New York Metropolis chief medical expert determined that Epstein’s dying was a suicide by hanging.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, had promised to make public Epstein-related information if reelected and accused Democrats of protecting up the reality. However in July, the Justice Division mentioned a beforehand touted Epstein shopper checklist didn’t exist, angering Trump’s supporters.
In search of to quell the discontent from his base of conservative supporters and congressional Democrats, Trump instructed Legal professional Common Pam Bondi final month to hunt the discharge of the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury material, as he sought to quell discontent over his administration’s dealing with of paperwork from the instances.
However Engelmayer wrote that the Maxwell grand jury proceedings, which consisted of testimony from two legislation enforcement brokers, didn’t comprise noteworthy info that had not beforehand been made public at Maxwell’s month-long trial 4 years in the past.
“The supplies don’t determine any individual apart from Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor. They don’t talk about or determine any shopper of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” the choose wrote. “They don’t reveal new sources of their wealth. They don’t discover the circumstances of Epstein’s dying.”
Engelmayer acknowledged that the extent to which the fabric had already been made public weighed in favor of unsealing the information. However he mentioned that was not sufficient to outweigh the “systemic curiosity” in sustaining the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.
Grand juries function largely out of the general public eye to forestall interference in prison investigations and to guard the reputations of people who should not charged with crimes.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Enhancing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Porter)
