After a long court battle, a Manhattan federal judge unsealed many of the documents connected to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, on Thursday night.
The documents include the deposition of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, from a civil lawsuit filed in 2015. Also included are a series of emails sent between Epstein and Maxwell in January 2015, in which Epstein tells Maxwell how she should deny the allegations made against her. This email correspondence confirms that Epstein and Maxwell had been in contact somewhat regularly, despite her claim to the contrary.
But there’s a lot we still don’t know, and the documents released only add to the questions. Some of the pages contain lists of possible corroborating witnesses, many of whom were blacked out entirely. The names of those involved with Epstein and Maxwell have also been redacted, with the exception of a few notable persons: Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell, Glenn Dubin, and more. Only Dershowitz was directly accused of sexual misconduct in Giuffre’s deposition, an accusation that he has emphatically denied.
These redactions were made to prevent readers from discerning the identifies of nonparties, according to Judge Loretta Preska. But the only people served are Maxwell and Epstein. Indeed, the court blacked out the names of all corroborating witnesses provided by Giuffre but allowed the names of Maxwell’s corroborating witnesses to be published. Why not protect both sets of witnesses?
Similarly, the court published the home addresses of all law enforcement officers involved in the case but redacted the names of all the individuals who allegedly have direct knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring:
The public deserves to know the extent to which this scandal spread in our society. It involved some of the highest members of government and some of the wealthiest people in the world. And if they are complicit, we ought to hold them accountable.
Right now, the court is shielding them from that accountability. Legally, that may be the only course of action available to the court while the investigation runs its course. But morally, I can’t help but feel that these secrets have been kept for far too long, and it’s time for the truth to come out.
