Longtime Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell does not want the grand jury testimony from her case unsealed.
The disgraced British socialite is currently asking the Supreme Court to review her original sentencing and is cooperating with federal investigators in the case.
She spoke for two days with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month.
The Southern District of New York denied Maxwell’s request to review the grand jury material to assess whether her counsel wanted to object to its release.
Given that, her attorneys decided ‘she has no choice but to respectfully oppose the government’s motion to unseal it.’
‘Ghislaine Maxwell has not seen the material and cannot take an informed position,’ her lawyer David Oscar Markus wrote in a Tuesday filing.
Markus said his client answered every question she was asked by DOJ and spoke about 100 different people in her more than nine hours of interviews.
Additionally, Maxwell’s attorneys are angling for a pardon for their client, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Just days after speaking with Blanche, Maxwell was transferred from the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, to the minimum-security all-women’s Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas.
Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to unseal grand jury testimony in the Southern District of New York and Southern District of Florida, where Epstein and Maxwell’s cases were litigated.
Florida’s court immediately denied the request, while SDNY asked for the government to provide more information justifying the request for the highly secretive materials.
Maxwell’s lawyers noted that the government did not oppose their client reviewing the grand jury transcripts to decide if she wanted to object to their unsealing.
Still, grand jury testimony is one of the most protected pieces of materials from court cases and is very difficult to get unsealed – especially years after the case has closed.
Maxwell’s lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to review Maxwell’s 2022 sentencing for 20 years. They claim she shouldn’t have ever been charged, arguing the Epstein associate was protected under his 2007 plea deal.
In Tuesday’s filing, they detail how unsealing grand jury materials could adversely impact her appeal.
They called the testimony ‘untested, hearsay-laden grand jury transcripts, which contain statements presented in secret and never challenged by the adversarial process.’
Markus has lamented that Maxwell has been used as the scapegoat in the Epstein case. She is the only person behind bars for the disgraced financier’s crimes.
‘Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,’ Maxwell’s lawyers wrote in the latest filing.
‘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.’
‘When Epstein died, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York pivoted and made Maxwell the face of his crimes. She became the scapegoat and the only person the government could put on trial,’ they added.
Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on August 10, 2019 as he awaited trial for federal charges of child sex trafficking.
While his death was deemed a suicide, online conspiracies swirled that he was murdered to prevent Epstein from implicating any of his high profile clients or revealing any damning information about the rich and famous.
The FBI and Justice Department released a review last month of the Epstein files that left MAGA supporters furious and suspicious of a ‘cover-up.’
Both agencies concluded that Epstein did die by suicide and claimed there was no ‘client list’ of high-profile co-conspirators. They also said that no one else would be charged in connection to Epstein’s crimes.
But in the weeks following the memo, Trump was forced to act as his base reeled over the lack of transparency.
Trump directed Bondi to request the unsealing of grand jury testimony and Deputy AG Blanche jetted off to Florida to interview Maxwell in person.
Now, reports claim Trump’s DOJ is weighing whether it should release a recording of Blanche’s sit-down with Maxwell.
