Previously sealed Epstein and Maxwell evidence ordered released by US court

19 August 2026 , 10:42

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"Volumes" of previously unseen evidence against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell will reportedly soon see the light of day for the first time.

As reported by Radar Online, the trove of documents from when Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation in 2015 had been under seal, but Manhattan Federal Court Judge Loretta Preska has ordered the unsealing of previously subpoenaed material from the case.

Maxwell ’Lodged a Kitchen Sink of Objections’ Against Documents Unsealing

Preska ordered the unsealing of the documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law in November 2025.

"Maxwell has lodged a veritable kitchen sink of objections to the government’s request to publish the sealed materials in compliance with the Act," Preska noted in her ruling about how Epstein’s jailed former girlfriend was fighting to keep the documents sealed.

The judge wrote, "The court finds that all of Maxwell’s objections are meritless and that, in light of the Act, any remaining materials in the Government’s possession should become part of the public record, subject to any victim-protecting redactions authorized by the Act."

Maxwell Lawsuit’s ’Discovery Contained D-mning Evidence’

While Maxwell settled out of court with Giuffre in 2017, the Miami Herald had continued to fight for the documents to be released.

The Herald’s longtime investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who broke the Epstein trafficking story nationally in 2016, hailed the decision in a Substack post on Tuesday, August 18.

She explained, "The lawsuit was settled in early 2017. I had been told the discovery contained d-mning evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and other men, and that it was worth trying to get the courts to unseal the documents on the grounds that they were never properly sealed in the first place."

Documents Originally Part of a ’Blanket Sealing’

"Judicial records by law are supposed to be open to the public," Brown noted, but in this partcular case, the former Judge Robert Sweet, who died in 2019 at the age of 96, "issued a blanket sealing on all the documents because they contained ’sensitive’ and ’private’ information."

Brown claimed, "This is not the way sealing is supposed to happen, however. Each document that the lawyers want sealed has to be examined, and those requesting it be sealed must provide legal justification to the judge for doing so. This wasn’t done in this case.”

Ghislaine Maxwell Settled Virginia Giuffre Lawsuit Just Before Trial

Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation after the now-convicted felon accused her of lying about helping Epstein recruit, groom, and sexually traffic her as a teenager.

Mere weeks before the case was to go to trial, the pair settled out of court in May 2017 for an undisclosed sum.

Shortly before the settlement deal was reached, Sweet dealt Maxwell a major legal blow by refusing to toss the case, ruling that disputed facts needed to be hashed out before a jury.

Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, months ahead of the release of her bombshell memoir, Nobody’s Girl.

Maxwell was arrested in 2019 and convicted in 2021 of five out of six s-- trafficking related charges. She was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in federal prison.