By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) â One of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell âs most vocal accusers urged judges on Wednesday to grant the Justice Departmentâs request to unseal records from their federal sex trafficking cases, saying âonly transparency is likely to lead to justice.â
Annie Farmer weighed in through her lawyer, Sigrid S. McCawley, after the judges asked for input from victims before ruling on whether the records should be made public under a new law requiring the government to open its files on the late financier and his longtime confidante, who sexually abused young women and girls for decades.
Farmer and other victims fought for the passage of the law, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Signed last month by President Donald Trump, it compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release by Dec. 19 the vast troves of material theyâve amassed during investigations into Epstein.
The Justice Department last week asked Manhattan federal Judges Richard M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer to lift secrecy orders on grand jury transcripts and other material from Epsteinâs 2019 sex trafficking case and a wide range of records from Maxwellâs 2021 case, including search warrants, financial records and notes from interviews with victims.
âNothing in these proceedings should stand in the way of their victory or provide a backdoor avenue to continue to cover up historyâs most notorious sex-trafficking operation,â McCawley wrote in a letter to the judges.
The attorney was critical of the government for failing to prosecute anyone else in Epstein and Maxwellâs orbit.
She asked the judges to ensure that the orders they issue do not preclude the Justice Department from releasing other Epstein-related materials, adding that Farmer âis waryâ that any denial could be used âas a pretext or excuseâ to withhold information.
Epstein, a millionaire money manager known for socializing with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the academic elite, killed himself in jail a month after his 2019 arrest.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 by a federal jury of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of Epsteinâs underage victims and participating in some of the abuse. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
In a court filing Wednesday, Maxwellâs lawyer again said that she is preparing a habeas petition in a bid to overturn her conviction. The lawyer, David Markus, first mentioned the habeas petition in court papers in August as she fought the Justice Departmentâs initial bid to have her case records unsealed. The Supreme Court in October declined to hear Maxwellâs appeal.
Markus said in Wednesdayâs filing that while Maxwell now âdoes not take a positionâ in the wake of the transparency actâs passage, doing so âwould create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrialâ if her habeas petition succeeds.
The records, Markus said, âcontain untested and unproven allegations.â
Engelmayer, whoâs weighing whether to release records from Maxwellâs case, gave her and victims until Wednesday to respond to the Justice Departmentâs unsealing request. The government must respond to their filings by Dec. 10. The judge said he will rule âpromptly thereafter.â
Berman, who presided over the Epstein case, ordered victims and Epsteinâs estate to respond by Wednesday and gave the government until Dec. 8 to reply to those submissions. Berman said he would make his âbest efforts to resolve this motion promptly.â
Lawyers for Epsteinâs estate said in a letter to Berman on Wednesday that the estate takes no position on the Justice Departmentâs unsealing request. The lawyers noted that the government had committed to making appropriate redactions of personal identifying information for victims.
Last week, a lawyer for some victims complained that the House Oversight Committee had failed to redact, or black out, some of their names from tens of thousands pages of Epstein-related documents it has released in recent months.
Transparency âCANNOT come at the expense of the privacy, safety, and protection of sexual abuse and sex trafficking victims, especially these survivors who have already suffered repeatedly,â lawyer Brad Edwards wrote.