Court sets DEADLINE for Epstein associate Maxwell's deposition unsealing after her lawyers urged to keep ‘sensitive’ info secret

A 400-page document Epstein’s alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell has fought to keep secret must be published no later than Thursday morning, a judge has demanded. The content reportedly includes proof Maxwell perjured herself.

The lengthy deposition, which includes transcripts of interviews with Maxwell said to include lurid details about her sex life, must be made public no later than 9am on Thursday morning, Senior US District Judge Loretta Preska ordered on Tuesday.

Preska gave Maxwell the option to make “minimal redactions” blocking personally identifiable information of individuals not involved in the case against her, but the hard deadline appears to represent the definitive end to the legal fight over the transcript. 

The order comes on the heels of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision on Monday to uphold Preska’s initial July decision to unseal the deposition, a ruling Maxwell’s lawyers immediately appealed. They sought to have the material suppressed because it contained “intimate” details about her personal life that could interfere with her getting a fair trial on pending sex trafficking charges, arguing unsealing the deposition could “forever let the cat out of the bag.”

However, prosecutors insisted it was relevant because Maxwell allegedly perjured herself during the seven-hour testimony, and the Second Circuit declared Maxwell’s lawyers’ argument was without merit. The interviews with the 58-year-old socialite were conducted in 2016 as part of a since-settled libel case against Maxwell by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has also accused Maxwell of abusing her – though those claims are not included in the current charges against her.

The daughter of media mogul and alleged Israeli spy Robert Maxwell faces six charges related to both sex trafficking and perjury and was arrested in July in New Hampshire. She remains held in a Brooklyn jail, having been denied bail as an “extreme flight risk” with passports from multiple countries, and her trial is due to begin in July.
Maxwell faces up to 35 years in prison on the charges.

Multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein died in prison under suspicious circumstances last August, his death ruled a suicide, while facing similarly harsh charges after all but skating through earlier sex crimes in 2008. While forced to register as a sex offender, he was sentenced to 13 months for soliciting an underage prostitute (despite dozens of underage girls having documented complaints against him) and was allowed to spend most of his days outside the prison facility.

His death in the face of potential prosecution raised intense speculation, as the financier had hosted many high-profile guests at his controversial parties and on his private island. Among them were US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as the UK's Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and even famed (and now deceased) physicist Stephen Hawking.

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