Secret court filings related to disgraced financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged madame Ghislaine Maxwell could implicate “hundreds of other people,” her lawyer told the court at a hearing Wednesday.
Finding out who the people are will take time as Maxwell’s lawyer, an attorney representing some women Epstein allegedly abused and a U.S. District Court judge have not yet agreed on how the documents should be unsealed.
The judge, Loretta Preska, was reportedly irritated that the sides haven’t come to an agreement yet. The documents are part of a defamation lawsuit one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, filed several years ago against Maxwell, a British socialite who allegedly procured young girls for Epstein.
The list of “hundreds of other people” that could be implicated include “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders.”
“Did you people not talk about this?” Preska barked at the lawyers in a Manhattan federal court. A plan was then put in place to figure out a process to categorize the thousands of pages of sealed documents over the next two weeks.
The lawyers would then have another week to figure out which group of documents should be unsealed first, followed by a week-to-week process thereafter to evaluate which documents should or should not be released to the public, according to CNBC.
“There are hundreds of other people who could be implicated” in the documents, Maxwell lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca said. Pagliuca wanted at least a month to decide which documents go into which of 10 categories, but the judge shot that down.
“You know we got to get this done,” Preska said.
The hearing was nearly a month after Epstein allegedly killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. Epstein of course was once friends with both President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton, as well as Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Prosecutors continue to investigate the Epstein case and it’s possible that others could be charged.
Giuffre alleges she was sexually abused by Epstein’s circle of high-profile politicians and business executives, as well as Harvard Law professor and staunch Trump defender Alan Dershowitz, who denies the claims.
About 2,000 pages of documents have already been released, including allegations against former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who both denied the allegations. The documents also showed Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane in 1997, and that Clinton flew on it many times.
