Ghislaine Maxwell court documents unsealed by federal court

Ghislaine Maxwell was mocked for having ‘total amnesia’ after she claimed in a deposition that she couldn’t recall taking a single flight with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser even though logs showed they traveled on the pedophile’s private jet 23 times together, newly unsealed court documents reveal.

Dozens of files were unsealed overnight by a federal judge in New York in relation to Maxwell’s ongoing sex trafficking case.

The majority of the 52 files are related to a long-settled defamation lawsuit filed in 2016 by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre after Maxwell called her a liar.

Giuffre, who is now 37, has long claimed that Maxwell and Epstein recruited and then trafficked her when she was 17.

Among the documents that were unsealed overnight was Maxwell’s efforts to quash requests from Giuffre’s attorneys to obtain her financial records after Giuffre sued her for $50 million. 

Giuffre’s attorneys argued that obtaining Maxwell’s records were relevant to show a financial link to Epstein.

In court documents, Giuffre’s attorneys said Maxwell was malicious due to ‘extraordinary lack of memory about her involvement in the abuse’.

The majority of the 52 files are related to a long-settled defamation lawsuit filed in 2016 by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre after Maxwell called her a liar

‘For instance, (Maxwell) cannot even recall a single flight on Epstein’s private jet with Ms Giuffre, even though flight logs show that (Maxwell) had 23 flights with Ms Giuffre while Ms Giuffre was underage,’ the attorneys said, according to the court documents.

Her attorneys also went on to argue that Maxwell could not recall the circumstances under which a photo was taken of her, Giuffre and another person whose named was redacted from the court documents. 

‘Based on (Maxwell’s) convenient and near total amnesia about documented incriminating events alone, a reasonable jury could find that she acted deliberately and maliciously when she arranged for false and defamatory statements about Ms Giuffre to be transmitted literally around the globe,’ the lawyers argued, according to court documents.

The court documents were among those unsealed overnight in New York after Judge Loretta Preska ruled last month that files – some of which included Maxwell’s personal affairs – should be made public. 

Maxwell told lawyers that she never remembered being on Epstein’s private plane with Virginia. But flight logs show the pair flew together at least 23 times when Virginia was underage. Maxwell was shown to have flown on the plane more than 300 times, according to flight logs. Those involving Virginia, who is identified by her maiden name Roberts, are shown in blue 

Maxwell is pictured above in a court sketch from an April hearing in Manhattan Federal court related to her sex trafficking case

The judge ruled that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell’s right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed. 

Maxwell’s lawyers were opposed to the move. 

The documents are part of a tranche of material that has been gradually released since the start of the year. 

The British socialite is charged with procuring four teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 2004.

She is also charged with perjury over testimony she gave during a July 2016 deposition in the defamation case involving Giuffre.  

Giuffre claims Maxwell recruited her when she was 16 and took her to Epstein to be repeatedly raped and abused, including by Prince Andrew, which he denies. 

The defamation case was settled in 2017 but after requests from the media organization the documents are gradually being unsealed.  

Maxwell was arrested in July last year has pleaded not guilty to the charges.