The DOJ said in a filing to two federal judges that it wants grand jury exhibits in the two cases unsealed.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday asked a federal court to unseal grand jury exhibits from the investigations into sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a submission to U.S. District Judge Richard Berman and fellow U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, the DOJ said it wants grand jury exhibits in the two cases unsealed with redactions to keep the identities of their victims private. Earlier this week, the DOJ asked the judges to unseal grand jury transcripts in order to compare those documents with the public record.
“As there are parties whose names appear in the grand jury exhibits but did not appear in the grand jury transcripts, the Government is undertaking to notify such parties to the extent their names appear in grand jury exhibits that were not publicly admitted at the Maxwell trial (and they were not already notified in connection with the request to unseal the grand jury transcripts),” the Justice Department’s attorneys wrote.
The latest request relates to the 2019 criminal case that was brought against Epstein, which was later dropped after he was found dead in a New York City jail cell, as well as the criminal case against Maxwell. She was convicted on child sex trafficking charges in 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in a federal facility.
Friday’s filing by the government also said that some of the evidence in the Epstein and Maxwell cases may overlap with exhibits that were released to the public when Maxwell went on trial.
Also, the DOJ said that it will later submit sealed submissions to clarify what sections of the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury exhibits have already been made available to the public. The government has also compared the exhibits against the trial record and civil complaints that were filed by certain victims, the court filing said.
It’s not clear what the exhibits may include or when they could be unsealed.
