Ghislaine: Don’t let the cat out of the bag
Court bid to keep ‘intimate’ evidence secret before trial
GHISLAINE Maxwell has pleaded with a judge not to wreck her chances of a fair trial by releasing potentially embarrassing statements she made years ago.
She says her case could be destroyed by negative publicity by letting the ‘cat out of the bag’ and making public a deposition she gave four years ago.
Maxwell, 58, is currently locked up and facing trial over allegations she aided Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls.
Her deposition, sworn evidence given outside of a court, was taken in 2016 in a now-settled civil defamation action brought by Virginia Roberts, who said Epstein kept her as a ‘sex slave’ with Maxwell’s assistance. It is thought the 400-page transcript contains details of Maxwell’s sex life and potentially incriminating statements.
Her lawyers, in court papers filed yesterday, argue the order to release the document did not take into proper account their client’s privacy or the promise of confidentiality she received before making the deposition.
‘If the unsealing order goes into effect, it will forever let the cat out of the bag,’ the lawyers said, warning that ‘intimate, sensitive, and personal information’ about the socialite might ‘spread like wildfire across the internet’.
The lawyers also said an unsealing would undermine the ‘truth-seeking function’ of Maxwell’s trial by leading witnesses to ‘recast their memories of events from decades ago’.
Maxwell, daughter of late media tycoon Robert, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and abuse three girls between 1994 to 1997, and to committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath.
She was arrested in July in an £800,000 bolthole in the New Hampshire forests, where prosecutors said she was trying to evade capture. She is now being held in a New York jail. Her trial is scheduled for next July.
Epstein, 66, was found hanged last August in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Miss Roberts has said the public has a right to see Maxwell’s deposition.
Lawyers for Maxwell disagreed, saying her constitutional rights to remain silent and receive a fair trial by an impartial jury outweigh any presumption of public access.
Some documents from the defamation case were released last month.
But Maxwell’s lawyers asked the appeals court for permission to seal more than 1,000 pages of additional materials, which include her deposition.
Maxwell is separately challenging her confinement conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, saying she is being treated worse than other inmates awaiting trial.