🧵Update on DOJ's efforts to unseal Epstein and Maxwell grand jury material:
- DOJ has moved to unseal the Maxwell and Epstein grand jury exhibits in addition to the transcripts.
- Two more attorneys have withdrawn from Ghislaine's team. It seems David Oscar Markus, who is also counsel to Hillary Clinton, will be Ghislaine's primary counsel going forward.
- Epstein's Estate has responded and taken no position on the unsealing.
- More letters from victims have been docketed.
I'll parse the filings in the thread below.
Here's the previous thread of updates. It's rather lengthy but full of information that dedicated followers of these cases will find valuable.
I'll parse the updates in the order that I listed them in the original post. Here is DOJ's motion to unseal the grand jury exhibits. This was filed in both Epstein and Maxwell.
Unsealing the exhibits means DOJ will need to notify anyone whose name appears in them. They ask the courts to give them until next Thursday to provide an update on that process.
Submitted under seal and ex parte alongside this motion is documentation clarifying which exhibits have already been made public.
There have been a number of federal and civil cases connected to Epstein and Maxwell, some by anonymous victims, and DOJ "cannot attribute with certainty to whom the statements or allegations in those anonymized complaints can be attributed." Identifying what is already public is a challenge and DOJ says they may make further submissions if they identify
And in Epstein specifically, they have now submitted under seal and ex parte a version of the grand jury transcripts that identifies which parts are already made public.
Last week Everdell and Cohen withdrew as co-counsel to Ghislaine Maxwell.
This week, Pagliuca and Menninger withdrew.
If you have been reading my threads on these cases, you already know that Maxwell and Hillary Clinton share David Markus as an attorney.
Maxwell for her criminal appeal, and Clinton for her civil RICO case that Trump brought against her and others.
In Epstein, the Epstein Estate filed a simple one-page letter taking NO POSITION on the unsealing matter.
Several more victim letters have been docketed, including this one from Annie Farmer, who testified at Maxwell's trial.
She supports the unsealing of the grand jury transcripts.
"This transparency and accountability is a form of justice."
"Given the magnitude and abhorrence of Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes, unsealing the grand jury transcripts is not just appropriate, it is necessary to understand the full scope of the abuse and those who enabled it."
"This case presents a rare and compelling circumstance where the victims seek transparency, not secrecy."
"The victims represented by the undersigned counsel who are still alive do not just passively support unsealing, but affirmatively support unsealing"
Another letter is from attorney Bradley Edwards who is counsel for several of Epstein and Maxwell's victims.
He is writing on their behalf and to "urge the Court to administer any disclosure in a manner that fully honors the victims’ rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act" and other law and precedent.
Their concern is, of course, for the victims, and the notification process has not given them much confidence.
They believe that "additional individuals-whom [they] also represent-were liekly referenced in" the grand jury materials that are to be unsealed.
"Many Epstein victims were minors at the time of the abuse; even for those now adults, § 3771(a)(8) and the Court’s protective authority warrant safeguards that functionally align with § 3509(d) principles."
They are not opposed to the unsealing but are concerned and want to make sure that no more harm befalls the victims and that applicable law and precedent are followed.
They ask the court for the following relief. Absent this relief, they ask the court to "deny disclosure without prejudice."
"the facts reveal this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured i.e. the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible. This was politicized intelligence..."
🧵Update on DOJ's efforts to unseal Epstein and Maxwell grand jury material:
-DOJ has a filing due today answering 5 questions from Judge Berman (Epstein) and 3 questions from Judge Englemeyer (Maxwell).
-Letters from victims are beginning to hit the docket.
-One of Maxwell's attorneys has withdrawn from the case.
In Epstein, Judge Berman asked DOJ to
-Verify dates of the grand jury presentation(s)
-Provide all exhibits shown to grand jurors
-State whether DOJ seeks to unseal the exhibits as well as the transcripts (in an earlier filing they said they did)
-ID which exhibits are not public record
-Provide the court with analysis on how the Nolle Prosequi that ended this case when Epstein died may impact this current effort to unseal these materials.
Nolle prosequi means "not to wish to prosecute."
When Epstein died, the case needed to be dismissed, as it couldn't go forward without a defendant.
"the FBI had no intelligence about Trump or others associated with the Trump campaign being in contact with Russian intelligence officers during the campaign"
"Moreover, significant intelligence information that first became available for the FBI to review in 2018 showed that the Russians had access to sensitive U.S. government information years earlier that would have allowed them to identify Steele's subsources."
"Indeed, an experienced FBI analyst assessed that as a result of their access to the information, Steele's subsources could have been compromised by the Russians at a point in time prior to the date of the first Steele dossier report."
Picture this: Russian hackers are reading emails exchanged between members of think tanks, Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff, and Democratic leadership.
These hackers must translate the emails into Russian, analyze them, and produce reports for the SVR/Moscow.
When drafting their analytical memoranda, they attach only the key emails that support their findings, avoiding the inclusion of dozens of emails or detailed explanations of who sent what to whom or each person’s role.
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened based on this single paragraph, which was itself based on a conversation overheard at a bar between Papadopoulos and an Australian diplomat.
The conversations happened on May 6 and May 10, 2016.
Over two months later, ON THE EXACT SAME DAY THAT HILLARY CLINTON APPROVED THE PLAN, July 26, Australia gives the notes on this conversation to U.S. State Dept officials in the U.K. and then hand it off to the FBI official at the London Embassy.
That was enough to spark an FBI investigation, which led to a FISA warrant on @GeorgePapa19 and then FISAs on other people (Page, @GenFlynn ) associated with the Trump campaign, and the full-fledged Crossfire Hurricane investigation had "oil poured into the fire" from the Steele Dossier, Alfa Bank, Yotophone...
🧵Late last night, DOJ filed responses in both the Epstein and Maxwell cases, addressing each judge’s questions regarding the unsealing of grand jury materials.
DOJ also submitted the following ex parte and under seal:
-An index of the grand jury materials
-A complete set of unredacted grand jury transcripts
-A complete set of redacted grand jury transcripts
-A description of other grand jury materials (exhibits, etc.)
DOJ's effort to unseal the Epstein grand jury material in SDFL was recently denied due to the 11th Circuit's binding opinion in Pitch v. United States, which restricted the judge in that case from unsealing them.
DOJ knew this going in and conceded it in their filing. They made the filing, knowing it would be denied, for purposes of appeal later.
In the 2nd Circuit, where SDNY is, that court has held that “there are certain ‘special circumstances’ in which release of grand jury records is appropriate..."