Federal prosecutors hinted in a recent court filing that possible criminal charges in the late Jeffrey Epstein’s case may be coming as a grand jury investigation is still active.
“The full scope and details of that investigation, however, have not been made public.”
The prosecutors wrote the letter to the U.S. District Court judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case, urging the judge to block Maxwell’s lawyers from filing newly obtained documents in civil cases that were brought against the British socialite.
The prosecutors said it was inappropriate for Maxwell’s lawyers to file those documents, as they could have adverse effects on the grand jury investigation.
“It would be grossly inappropriate for [the] defense counsel to be permitted to sift through the criminal case discovery and cherry-pick materials they may believe could provide some advantage in their efforts to defend against accusations of abuse by victim plaintiffs, delay court-ordered disclosure of previously sealed materials, or any other legal effort the defendant may be undertaking at any particular time,” they wrote in the letter. “And yet that is what the defendant proposes.”
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019, which triggered speculation about whether he had died of a suicide, as the city’s medical examiner ruled.
He was charged in July 2019 with sexually exploiting dozens of girls between 2002 and 2005. Maxwell, meanwhile, was accused of helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse girls from 1994 to 1997 and lying about her role in 2016.
