Donald Trump is seeking to quell discontent from his base of conservative supporters and congressional Democrats over his administration's handling of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases.
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See subscription optionsMaxwell, the former girlfriend of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein who was convicted in 2021 of helping him sexually abuse teenage girls, says she opposed the US government's bid to release transcripts of proceedings before the grand jury that indicted her.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Maxwell's lawyers said the release of the materials would jeopardise a potential re-trial if she succeeds in persuading the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
"The reputational harm from releasing incomplete, potentially misleading grand jury testimony, untested by cross-examination, would be severe and irrevocable," her lawyers wrote.
Trump in July instructed Attorney-General Pam Bondi to seek the release of the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury material.
Republican Trump had promised to make public Epstein-related files if re-elected and accused Democrats of covering up the truth. But in July, the Justice Department said a previously touted Epstein client list did not exist, angering Trump's supporters. Epstein took his own life in jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
Grand juries meet in secret to guard against interference in criminal investigations, and records of their proceedings cannot be disclosed without a judge's permission. The Justice Department has cited what it calls continuing public interest in the cases in asking Manhattan-based judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer to authorise the disclosure of the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury transcripts.
The judges asked lawyers for Maxwell, Epstein's estate, and the alleged victims to weigh in on the possible disclosure by Tuesday.
Lawyers for Epstein's estate said they took no position on whether the transcripts should be released. A lawyer for Annie Farmer, who testified at Maxwell's trial that Maxwell and Epstein abused her at Epstein's New Mexico ranch when she was 16, said disclosing the transcripts may provide additional details about people who facilitated Epstein's alleged abuse.
"The public has a legitimate interest in understanding the full scope of Epstein's and Maxwell's crimes," wrote the lawyer, Sigrid McCawley. Bradley Edwards, a lawyer for several alleged victims of Epstein and Maxwell, wrote in a filing that any disclosure of grand jury material should shield the alleged victims' identities, and that their lawyers should be able to review the material before it is made public.
It is unclear whether the public would learn anything new or noteworthy if such material were released.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Justice Department said in a court filing that much of the testimony from law enforcement officers at Maxwell's grand jury proceedings in 2020 was corroborated by the victims and witnesses who testified publicly at her trial the following year.
Maxwell's lawyers have told the Supreme Court that her conviction was invalid because a non-prosecution and plea agreement that federal prosecutors had made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also shielded his associates.
The court is due to consider whether to take up the appeal in late September.
Deputy US Attorney-General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell in July o see if she had any information about other people who may have committed crimes. Neither party has provided a detailed account of what they discussed.
Maxwell last week was moved from a prison in Florida to a lower-security facility in Texas.
Australian Associated Press
