After following a long, winding, and unlawfully blocked road since 2015, files from Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell are set to be unsealed, likely causing some powerful men to sweat

Prince Andrew, with Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell (background) (CNN)

A federal court has ordered the unsealing of files from a lawsuit brought in 2015 by perhaps the best known victim in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The lawsuit, brought by Virginia Giuffre against Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, comes to a conclusion after eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald newspaper, which along with the award-winning work of reporter Julie K. Brown, is largely credited with exposing Epstein's criminal network. 

U.S. Judge Loretta Preska (Southern District of New York), an appointee of George H.W. Bush, ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) supersedes Maxwell's arguments to keep the lawsuit details sealed, a decision that could reveal more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices. A recent report at Yahoo! News came under the headline "Ghislaine Maxwell's desperate bid to hide Jeffrey Epstein files crushed by judge." 

A separate, jointly published report from The New Republic (TNR) and Yahoo! News provides details about the long path the Giuffre lawsuit has traveled. Under the headline "Federal judge orders release of Virginia Giuffre's case files at last," TNR's Hafiz Rashid writes:

Virginia Giuffre's 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell is going to be unsealed.

A federal court in Manhattan last week ordered the public release of the files from Giuffre's defamation lawsuit against the accomplice and partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald, reported Julie Brown, the investigative journalist for the newspaper best known for uncovering Epstein's crimes.

Maxwell had been fighting to keep the lawsuit details under wraps, but her arguments were not enough to convince U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the grand jury arguments Maxwell cited to keep the records sealed.

Giuffre brought the lawsuit more than a decade ago after Maxwell accused her of lying about being abused by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and other powerful figures. The lawsuit's discovery process yielded thousands of pages of documents, including depositions of Maxwell, Giuffre, and many others, and Brown was told that it contains more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices. 

The lawsuit took a number of twists and turns over the years, including some questionable actions from the bench, Rashid reports:

The judge in the initial case, Robert Sweet, took the unusual step of sealing all of the documents because they contained "sensitive" and "private" information. He put a protective order on hearings and decisions made in the case as well as volumes of evidence reportedly proving that Epstein and Maxwell were running an underage sex-trafficking ring.

Before any of this could come out in a trial, Maxwell settled the case in 2017, paying Giuffre somewhere between $3 million and $5 million. But now much of the information that could implicate powerful people will soon be made public, and there could be fallout in Washington D.C., New York, and beyond.

The name of U.S. President Donald Trump and related terms reportedly are mentioned more than 38,000 times across more than 5,300 individual files. Is Trump one of the powerful figures who could be sweating about possible exposure in the Giuffre files? An answer to that question might unfold over the coming weeks. For now, it could be interesting to see what reaction, if any, Trump and his Department of Justice have to Judge Preska's decision. It also might be interesting to see what actions, if any, they are forced to take as the result of the files' release.

Julie K. Brown provides more insights about Judge Preska's decision in a piece at her "The Epstein Files" Substack page. Under the title "Miami Herald set a landmark legal and journalistic precedent in its fight to unseal the civil lawsuit. What it means," she writes:

Success, finally.

Last week, a federal court in Manhattan ordered the release of the voluminous case files from Virginia’s Giuffre’s 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell.

The release of these files was in part the result of eight years of litigation by the Miami Herald and its parent company, McClatchy, which have been fighting for the material since I published my series “Perversion of Justice,” in 2018.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Judge Loretta Preska rejected Maxwell’s final arguments to keep the files sealed, noting that the passage last year of the Epstein Files Transparency Act superseded any earlier grand jury arguments that Maxwell was using to keep the records from the public.

What does this mean, and what new information will we learn?

First some history. Virginia brought this defamation lawsuit against Maxwell back in 2015, after Maxwell publicly proclaimed that Virginia was a liar who had made up her allegations of being sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell and other powerful men (including Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the former Prince Andrew.)

Giuffre, represented by the Boies-Schiller firm, sued Maxwell for defamation, asserting that she faced "public ridicule, contempt, and disgrace" when Maxwell went public with her statements. As part of the lawsuit, the lawyers gathered tens of thousands of pages of discovery, including depositions by Giuffre, Maxwell and dozens of other people. Part of the effort also involved Dershowitz, who together with social media influencer Michael Chernovich, tried unsuccessfully to unseal portions of the Giuffre-Maxwell case while it was still being litigated.

The lawsuit was settled in early 2017. I had been told the discovery contained damning evidence against Epstein, Maxwell and other men, and that it was worth trying to get the courts to unseal the documents on the grounds that they were never properly sealed in the first place.

Judicial records by law are supposed to be open to the public. In this case, the former judge (Robert Sweet, now deceased) issued a blanket sealing on all the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information. Sweet placed a protective order on massive amounts of material, including hearings and judicial decisions made in the case — and voluminous evidence that Virginia presented to show that Epstein and Maxwell were operating an underage sex-trafficking operation.

This is not the way sealing is supposed to happen, however. Each document that the lawyers want sealed has to be examined, and those requesting it be sealed must provide legal justification to the judge for doing so. That wasn’t done in this case.

Nearly all the evidence that Virginia’s lawyers uncovered about Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking that came out during this civil case was kept secret.

Maxwell settled the case before it could go to trial, however — and paid Virginia somewhere in the neighborhood of $3-5 million. By settling it, she thought that all the evidence about her involvement would remain under seal.

But I convinced my editors to ask our lawyers to file a motion to intervene in the case in order to unseal the files.

An appeals court eventually ruled in our favor, and on August 9, 2019, thousands of pages were made public, including sworn statements by Virginia in which she alleged she was trafficked to Dershowitz, who represented Epstein; former Prince Andrew; former Maine Sen. George Mitchell; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; hotel magnate Tom Pritzker; the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky. All of the men denied that they were involved with Giuffre.

Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the following morning.