Court weighs unsealing records that could reveal new details of Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse
(FOX News JUST NOW: Alan Dershowitz wants the sealed documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case to go public.)
The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.
By Julie K. Brown -March 06, 2019 09:03 PM,
Updated 11 hours 38 minutes ago
Privacy rights versus press freedoms took center stage Wednesday at an explosive federal appeals court hearing in New York, where lawyers argued to unseal confidential court files that could reveal evidence of an underage sex trafficking operation allegedly run by New York multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reserved judgment in the case, but the panel suggested it was leaning toward the release to the public of vast portions of the court record. The file on the case, which was settled in 2017, contains more than 1,000 documents, lawyers said during oral arguments led by the Miami Herald, which seeks to open the entire file.
Most of the documents, including court orders and motions, were filed under seal or heavily redacted, similar to other cases in New York and Florida involving the wealthy, politically connected money manager. Epstein, now 66, was not a party to the lawsuit, which was filed against Maxwell in 2015 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claimed she was recruited by the pair to perform massages on them when she was 16 and known as Virginia Roberts. Giuffre claims she and other girls were sexually abused and pimped out to a number of wealthy influential people from 1999 to 2002.
The Herald said that while some redactions of personal information, including the names of other possible underage victims, are appropriate, the blanket sealing of the case violated the First Amendment, which grants citizens a presumptive right of access to court records, except in the rarest of circumstances.
The Herald’s lawyer, Sanford Bohrer, told the three-judge appeals court panel that the case should be unsealed in its entirety because the law provides the public with access in order to hold legal institutions accountable and to maintain confidence that they will protect the most vulnerable in society.
Two other parties to the appeal, attorneys for Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz and conservative social media blogger Michael Cernovich, also argued to unseal the entire case file. Dershowitz’s lawyer, Andrew G. Celli Jr., wanted the court to release three documents immediately, saying they were necessary to exonerate his client, who has been accused of being involved in Epstein’s crimes.
Dershowitz, 81, was among a team of lawyers who represented Epstein when he came under criminal investigation in Palm Beach in 2005. Epstein was accused by more than three dozen girls, most of them 13 to 16, of luring them to his mansion to give him massages that turned into sex acts. He then used those same girls to recruit more girls over a period of several years, court and police records show.
In 2008, Epstein received an unusually lenient plea deal that gave him and an untold number of others who were not cited by name immunity from federal prosecution. That plea deal was brokered under former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who is currently President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor. Acosta’s handling of the case is now under investigation by the Justice Department.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the agreement was illegal because Acosta and other prosecutors failed to inform Epstein’s victims about the deal in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
Maxwell, the daughter of the late British publishing baron Robert Maxwell, has never been charged and has denied that she was involved in any crimes.
Dershowitz has disputed allegations that he was involved. He maintains the court record in the case contains evidence that Giuffre was writing a book manuscript at the time she publicly accused him of having sex with her when she was underage.
Prior to the hearing, Dershowitz’s attorney had suggested that the appeals panel might want to allow him to present part of his argument outside the presence of opposing lawyers, the news media and the public. The judges did not grant or even address that suggestion, made in a letter to the court.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article227184299.html