In a bombshell ruling, a judge has said that documents containing the identities of victims and alleged associates of deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein can be made available to the public, according to the Daily Wire.
Judge Loretta Preska said Friday that several documents from a 2015 defamation trial against Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell could be unsealed as a matter of public interest.
Many believe the names in the files could be part of deceased child sex trafficker Epstein’s elusive “client list.”
The judge’s ruling will allow the names of several “John Does” to be revealed from a seven-year-old trial in which Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre had sued Maxwell for defamation. Preska said that a lot of the “purportedly sensitive information” included in the documents had already been made public through Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial.
Under contention were the real names of “Does” 12, 28, 97, 107, 144, 147, 171, and 183. “Doe 183” got a temporary delay to allow that individual to appeal.
“That Doe’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has been a subject of intent media coverage, and Doe 183’s name has appeared in numerous places in unsealed portions of Ms. Maxwell’s criminal trial transcript,” Preska said Friday, according to a report from Insider. “In the court’s view, there’s no reason to redact Doe 183 from the documents.”
Billionaire Hyatt Hotel executive Tom Pritzker, a cousin of Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker, was one of the individuals named in the documents. He had hoped to keep his name sealed as he said it would harm his reputation.
Giuffre has accused him of having sex with her as part of Epstein’s trafficking scheme, but Pritzker has denied the allegations. Pritzker’s name was referenced in the documents during a deposition.
Judge Preska said that much of the “purportedly sensitive information” had already been made public last year during Maxwell’s trial for trafficking underage girls to Epstein, which led to her being jailed for 20 years.
Preska declared that the public’s right to access outweighed any “generalized concerns” about privacy and the material was “not particularly salacious.”
According to SlayNews.com, the judge did not set a timeline for when the material should be made public, but it will likely be weeks away.
Slay News also reported that unlike with previous batches of documents, Maxwell did not oppose them and made no representation to the court.
All of the information from the unsealed documents will likely be made public in the coming weeks, according to the Daily Wire.
