Epstein’s ex, Ghislaine Maxwell, doesn’t want grand jury transcripts released

Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020. (John Minchillo / AP Photo)

NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, wants to keep grand jury records secret in the sex trafficking case that sent her to prison, her lawyers said Tuesday as prosecutors continued urging a court to release some of those records in the criminal case-turned-political fireball.

Maxwell hasn’t seen the material herself, her attorneys said — the grand jury process is conducted behind closed doors. But she opposes unsealing what her lawyers described as potentially “hearsay-laden” transcripts of grand jury testimony, which was given in secret and without her lawyers there to challenge it.

“Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain,” attorneys David O. Markus and Melissa Madrigal wrote.

Prosecutors declined to comment.

Government attorneys have been trying to quell a clamour for transparency by seeking the transcripts’ release — though the government also says the public already knows much of what’s in the documents.

Most of the information “was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses,” prosecutors wrote in court papers Monday. They noted that the disclosures excluded some victims’ and witnesses’ names.

Prosecutors had also said last week that some of what the grand jurors heard eventually came out at Maxwell’s 2021 trial and in various victims’ lawsuits. There were only two grand jury witnesses, both of them law enforcement officials, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors made clear Monday that they’re seeking to unseal only the transcripts of grand jury witnesses’ testimony, not the exhibits that accompanied it. But they are also working to parse how much of the exhibits also became public record over the years.

While prosecutors have sought to temper expectations about any new revelations from the grand jury proceedings, they aren’t proposing to release a cache of other information the government collected while looking into Epstein.

The transcript faceoff comes six years after authorities said Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges and four years after Maxwell was convicted of grooming underage girls to participate in sex acts with him. The British socialite denied the allegations and has appealed her conviction, so far unsuccessfully.

Some of President Donald Trump ’s allies spent years suggesting there was more to the Epstein saga than met the eye and calling for more disclosures. A few got powerful positions in Trump’s Justice Department — and then faced backlash after it abruptly announced that nothing more would be released and that a long-rumored Epstein “client list” doesn’t exist.

After trying unsuccessfully to change the subject and denigrating his own supporters for not moving on, the Republican president told Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask courts to unseal the grand jury transcripts in the case.

A top Justice Department official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, interviewed Maxwell late last month, at the government’s request. Last week, she was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas to continue serving her 20-year sentence. Officials didn’t explain why.

Trump said Tuesday that he didn’t know ahead of time about Maxwell’s prison transfer and hadn’t spoken to Blanche about his conversation with her.

“I think he probably wants to make sure that people should not be involved, or aren’t involved, are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people,” Trump said in a news conference Tuesday.

The Epstein uproar also has reached Congress, where the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department on Tuesday for files in the case. The committee also issued subpoenas to conduct sworn questioning of former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and eight former top law enforcement officials.

Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was among a number of Epstein’s famous former friends; so was Trump, a Republican. Both men have said they knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes until he was charged, and Epstein’s accusers have not alleged any wrongdoing by Trump or Clinton.

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed reporting.

Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press