A US judge ruled grand jury materials in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case will remain sealed, saying that making them public “would not reveal new information of any consequence”.
The justice department had asked Judge Paul Engelmayer to unseal the documents, in an effort to assauge anger among President Donald Trump’s supporters over the decision not to release all federal files on Maxwell’s associate, deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes tied to Epstein, opposed unsealing the materials.
The judge wrote it was important to protect the secrecy of grand juries, who decide whether to indict people accused of crimes.
There are special circumstances where that secrecy is broken, Judge Engelmayer wrote in his 31-page decision.
But he wrote that “applying the exception casually or promiscuously, as the government’s motion to unseal the summary-witness grand jury testimony here invites” would hurt the grand jury system. It could, he wrote, set a precedent where people do not believe the proceedings will be kept secret, which may discourage witnesses from testifying and jurors from focusing solely on the merits of the case.
He dismissed the government’s argument that much of the information given to the grand jury was made public during her trial, although he agreed that “a member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials…would thus learn next to nothing new”.
The materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor” and “do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” he wrote.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in December 2019 and was recently moved from a Florida prison to a new minimum-security facility in Texas.
Last week, one of her accusers said outside the court in New York that she should stay in prison for the rest of her life.
The BBC has reached out to Maxwell’s lawyers for comment.
Last month, she was interviewed by justice department officials under the Trump administration’s directive to gather and release credible evidence relating to the Epstein case.
On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to release what are known as “The Epstein Files”. But this summer the justice department and FBI said they had concluded that Epstein did not keep a “client list” and that the justice department would not be making additional files public.
In response to the backlash, Trump said Bondi should release “whatever she thinks is credible”.
Meanwhile, a congressional committee has sent a subpoena to the justice department related to federal investigations into the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell, which go back 20 years.
The president, who was friends with Epstein, has denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he and the financier, who died in federal custody while awaiting trial, fell out in the early 2000s.
By BBC News
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