A large amount of “damning” new evidence against convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell could soon come to light after a federal judge ordered a trove of case files to be unsealed.
Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, whose reportage is credited with catalyzing the disgraced financier’s downfall, wrote on her Substack Tuesday about Manhattan Federal Court Judge Loretta Preska’s decision to unseal the “voluminous” documents.
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The documents stem from a 2015 court case in which Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, sued Maxwell for defamation after she accused her of fabricating sex-trafficking allegations against Epstein and others, including former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Brown wrote she and The Herald fought a nearly decade-long court battle to have the documents released, arguing that they weren’t properly sealed. The case was settled in 2017.
“Judicial records by law are supposed to be open to the public. In this case, the former judge (Robert Sweet, now deceased) issued a blanket sealing on all the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information,” Brown wrote.
“Sweet placed a protective order on massive amounts of material, including hearings and judicial decisions made in the case — and voluminous evidence that Virginia presented to show that Epstein and Maxwell were operating an underage sex trafficking operation,” she continued.
