Ruling Cites Risk of ‘Unraveling the Foundations of Secrecy’ and Eroding Public Trust
A federal judge has ruled that transcripts of the secret grand jury testimony that led to the indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell will not be released to the public, a decision that comes despite a request from federal prosecutors to unseal the documents.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of New York said in a written ruling on Monday that the public release of the grand jury materials would risk “unraveling the foundations of secrecy upon which the grand jury is premised” and would erode the confidence of future witnesses called to testify.
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The judge’s decision rejected the government’s argument that releasing the documents would help to quell public suspicions about what authorities know regarding Maxwell’s former boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, a well-connected financier, died in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell, his socialite ex-girlfriend, was later convicted of helping him prey on underage girls.
In his ruling, Engelmayer stated that arguing the release would be “innocuous” because the testimony was redundant to evidence presented at Maxwell’s trial was “no answer.” He added that this same logic could be applied to “almost any grand jury testimony.”
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Federal prosecutors had sought to unseal the documents, hoping to address the “whirlpool of suspicions” surrounding the government’s knowledge of the Epstein case.
However, the Justice Department had previously acknowledged that the transcripts contained no testimony from witnesses who were not law enforcement personnel, making it unclear how much new information would have been revealed.
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