SOME EPSTEIN VICTIMS, VICTIMS’ RIGHTS ATTORNEYS, AND OTHERS ASK COURT TO BLOCK RELEASE OF EPSTEIN FILES (ACTUAL DOCUMENTS INCLUDED)
It may surprise you to learn that some Epstein victims, along with a crime victims’ rights law firm, have written to the Court, asking the Court to at least temporarily block the release of the Epstein investigation files. And then there are the two letters trying to block the release completely, at least as it relates to the grand jury files.
The letters were forwarded to the New York court by the DOJ, which had received the letters from their authors.
There are three letters in total, all of which are included for Notes from the Front members. I recommend to you especially the letter from the the law firm of Edwards Henderson, a/k/a The Crime Victim Law Firm. It is jaw-dropping in the things that it reveals, with a scathing (and at times humorous) take down of the DOJ. But mostly it is just very shocking and sad in driving home the enormous, international reach of Epstein’s tentacles, and the vast numbers of women involved.
And those looking to temporarily block the release are doing so over concerns that many of those victims’ names have not been, and likely would not be, adequately redacted. And that is a serious, legitimate concern.
Then there’s Neil Binder, one of the two attorneys representing clients who are in some way connected to the investigation and clearly listed in the grand jury records, although who they are and exactly how they are connected is unknown (if any of you has a clue as to whom and how, please let me know). At least one of them was to be called as a witness for the defense; that ultimately never happened. Binder seems to be fighting tooth and nail, and quoting legal chapter and verse, to keep the files (specifically the grand jury records) from being released at all, although he is also advocating that if they *must* be released, his clients’ names should be redacted. Same for the other attorney, Avrom Robin.
I’m going to talk about the Binder letter first, and skip over Avrom Robin’s letter as it basically puts forth a similar argument, only less eloquently.
Actually I’m going to let Binder’s letter do most of the talking; they are objecting to the release of the grand jury records in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell.
“… unsealing of the grand jury materials in United States v. Maxwell is not authorized by either Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) or the special circumstances doctrine applicable in this Circuit. .. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, H.R. 4405 (the “Act”), directs the disclosure of materials in the possession of the U.S. Department of Justice (”DOJ”), including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (”FBI”) and United States Attorneys’ Offices, but it nowhere mentions grand jury materials. And though the Government quotes the Supreme Court’s admonition that an exercise by Congress of the “power to modify the rule of secrecy” will not be inferred unless Congress has ‘’affirmatively express[ed} its intent to do so,” it draws the wrong conclusion. Congress did not affirmatively express any intent to abrogate the rule governing grand jury secrecy, and thus no inference of such intent should be made here.
Further, the fact that there is heightened public interest in the grand jury materials in this case – as evidenced by the passage of the Act – does not change the Court’s reasoning in the Opinion, which evaluated (and dismissed) the Government’s argument that intense public interest constitutes a special circumstance.
For the reasons stated in the August Letter, the Court should deny the Government’s renewed request to unseal the grand jury materials.”
Let me translate that for you:
“We don’t want those records released. Here are a bunch of legal reasons that you should NOT allow the grand jury records in the Maxwell investigation to be released. Please do NOT release them.”
Ok, now on to the victims’ requests and the crime victims’ rights law firm’s letter, from the law firm of Edwards Henderson.
This letter starts out by transcribing three different voicemails from three different Epstein victims whom the law firm represents. They say things like:
“I am sorry to bother you but given the current situation that might expose more victims names to the public. I have been unable to mentally and emotionally function or sleep … I am trying to see if we have a power to override any decisions for our names not to be exposed. Would you be available for a brief chat sometime this week? I would greatly appreciate it.”
And:
“I am beside myself with worry about the current news and the redactions situation as the first random file I happened to click on had a handwritten page of PB massage and it had [Victim 4]’s name and my name and so many others, the whole page was available for everyone to see with our unredacted names. I thought the government had promised to redact our names and identifying material. I don’t understand how this is happening again…”
This is of course hard enough, but then the attorneys (Bradley Edwards and Brittany Henderson) switch into high legal gear and go into exquisitely excruciating detail (their letter is seven pages long) about the investigation, the records, and the girls and women.
Explaining the vast scope of “the Epstein files” (those of you who have been with me for a while already understand that there is no one set of “Epstein files”), they say:
“The “Epstein Files” consist of the totality of the investigations completed by: (1) the Southern District of Florida from 2006-2008; (2) the Southern District of New York into Jeffrey Epstein from 2018-2019; and (3) into Ghislaine Maxwell from 2019-2021. Highlighting the magnitude of the problem and the utter lack of transparency to date, the Department of Justice has never released even the most basic of investigative materials pertaining to the very first investigation of Jeffrey Epestin, including the 53-page indictment or the 82-page prosecution memorandum that were prepared by Assistant United States Attorney Marie Villafana in 2007 in the Southern District of Florida. Notwithstanding, within these files as a whole, stemming across three investigations in two jurisdictions, there are dozens of FBI 302’s generated in each of the three investigations, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents seized from electronic devices located within Epstein’s (and presumably Maxwell’s) various homes, all other materials discovered during the various raids, information on nearly 100 different companies created by Jeffrey Epstein and his team of professionals, and a plethora of financial records.”
Then, explaining the scope of the investigation, and DOJ’s apparent inability to comprehend the vast amount of redaction involved to protect *all* of the victims:
“At this juncture, as made clear by DOJ’s improper releases to Oversight thus far, the problem is either: (1) The Department of Justice DOES NOT know the identities of all the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and thus cannot apply proper redactions to files; or (2) the Department of Justice is intentionally failing to protect victims from public exposure. Optimistically assuming the former, it is not possible for the Department of Justice to properly redact the names of victims without our assistance or the assistance of individuals who worked personally on the criminal or civil Epstein- related cases. Given our two decades of investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, DOJ simply does not, and cannot, have the same level of knowledge that we do with respect to the identity of the victims. The reasoning behind this is trifold: (1) the 2006 Southern District of Florida investigation into Jeffrey Epstein focused only on his minor child victims in Florida; (2) Jeffrey Epstein died during the course of the 2018 Southern District of New York investigation which focused only on his minor child victims in Florida and New York; and (3) the 2019 Southern District ofNew York investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell focused solely on the subset of victims which were relevant to her involvement in the abuse.”
And then:
“More pertinent to the breadth of the problem here, none of the investigations conducted by the Department of Justice ever focused on the young American adult women who were victimized through fraud, force, and coercion or the international trafficking operation that Jeffrey Epstein was running involving the exploitation and abuse of young, but not minor, women including those from nearly every Eastern European Country. To be clear, there are hundreds of women who were internationally trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. We represent women from Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Belarus, Sweden, England, and France; to name only a few. Most of these women have never spoken with the Department of Justice nor was the Department of Justice ever interested in speaking with them during any active investigation given that Epstein was never prosecuted or investigated for the international crimes that he committed, likely because he died in prison before the Government learned of that element of his trafficking scheme. Nonetheless, with respect to these women, Epstein engaged in extensive immigration fraud executed to illegally, internationally transport aspiring young models into this country where he would hold their visas in companies that he created and their passports in his possession so that they could not escape and so that he was able to control and essentially enslave them.”
Wow. I mean, I’ve reviewed a lot of Epstein documents, but in terms of driving it home this one is right up there.
And remember, this is only a few bits of the 7-page letter.
The bottom line is that this letter is asking for the Court to order the DOJ to *not* release the files until the redaction of every single victim’s name can be guaranteed.
But in the doing, this letter reveals so much more.
Notes from the Front members: the file with the letters is in your inbox.
To protect myself from legal claims of impermissible public republication, and attacks by trolls, among other things, I don’t share documents I find publicly, I make them available privately to Notes from the Front members, along with explanations and insights based on decades of law practice and as a law professor. You can join below for immediate access to all of the documents, our private chat, etc.. – it’s $5 a month and it’s fine to join and then cancel if you only want certain documents.
https://annepmitchell.substack.com/p/some-epstein-victims-victims-rights
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