In the battle to unseal court records relating to billionaire sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, two mystery parties are pushing to keep the documents secret, Politico reports. On Tuesday, the individuals identified only as “J. Doe” and “John Doe” filed court papers in support of Ghislaine Maxwell’s efforts to keep the records sealed—a decision made by a federal court in New York state. Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims Epstein kept her as his “sex slave,” along with The Miami Herald and a host of other news outlets, are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to unseal a trove of court documents. Those 167 documents relate to Giuffre’s now-settled defamation suit against Maxwell, a British socialite who was accused by Giuffre and other alleged victims of acting as Epstein’s madam and called Giuffre’s claims “obvious lies.”
John Doe and J. Doe filed their objections to making the records public just before the Appeals court’s deadline on Tuesday. Attorney Nick Lewin, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of John Doe, wrote that “wholesale unsealing of the Summary Judgment Materials will almost certainly disclose unadjudicated allegations against third persons—allegations that may be the product of false statements or, perhaps, simply mistake, confusion, or failing memories of events alleged to have occurred over a decade and half ago.”
Read it at Politico
