A federal appeals court denied British socialite and alleged sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell a request to keep her 2016 deposition about late financier Jeffrey Epstein sealed.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled on Monday that the public has a right to see the testimony taken in April 2016 in a defamation lawsuit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, Reuters reported.
The unsigned order from the appeals court determined that U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska did not overstep authority by denying Maxwell’s “meritless arguments” that her concerns were more important than the public right to see the 418-page deposition.
Preska previously decided in July that the testimony and hundreds of other documents from Giuffre’s lawsuit, which was settled in 2017, would be made public, as most of the associated documents are already public. She said “any minor embarrassment” their release could cause is “far outweighed by the presumption of public access.”
Maxwell’s lawyers had argued that making the deposition, including “intimate, sensitive, and personal details,” publicly available could damage her chance to have a fair trial. They also said she thought the testimony was confidential, and its release would breach her constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination, according to Reuters.
Giuffre, who said Maxwell brought her into Epstein’s trafficking circle, and the Miami Herald led the effort to get the documents unsealed.
Maxwell has been charged with assisting Epstein in forming a sex trafficking ring of underage girls and of committing perjury from denying participation in the effort. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Authorities arrested Maxwell in July after she was found in New Hampshire. She was then sent to a Brooklyn jail.
A medical examiner ruled that Epstein killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking crimes.