NEW YORK (AP) — A judge on Monday chided Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell for including confidential names of victims in court papers seeking to overturn her 2021 sex-trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said the evidence included in Maxwell’s habeas petition — which she filed alone without an attorney — will be kept under seal and out of public view “until properly reviewed and redacted to protect the identities of the victims.”
Any future documents Maxwell files must be filed under seal, the judge wrote.
He said he “reminds Maxwell, in firm terms, that she is prohibited from including in any public records any information identifying victims who were not publicly identified by name during her trial.”
A message was left for Maxwell’s attorney, David Markus, seeking comment.
Maxwell filed the petition last Wednesday, two days before the Justice Department began releasing investigative files on her and Epstein under the recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Maxwell claims that information that would have led to her exoneration was withheld and that false testimony was presented to the jury. She said the cumulative effect of the constitutional violations had resulted in a “complete miscarriage of justice”.
Engelmayer said Maxwell has until Feb. 17, 2026, to notify him if he plans to include any information from the so-called Epstein files in the petition, and must file an amended version by March 31, 2026.
A slow release, heavily redacted files
Protecting the identification of the victims was a key point in the ongoing Justice Department release.
The department said it plans to release the records on an ongoing basis by the end of the year, blaming the delay on the time-consuming process of withholding victims’ names and other identifying information. So far, the department has not given any notification when new records arrive.
That approach angered some prosecutors and members of Congress who fought to pass the transparency act. The records that were released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked context.
The Senate’s top Democrat on Monday called on colleagues to take legal action over the heavily worded progressive release.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act, the law passed last month that requires the release of records by last Friday.
“Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and got massive chunks of what little they provided,” Schumer, DN.Y. said in a statement. “This is a blatant cover-up.”
Instead of Republican support, Schumer’s resolution is largely symbolic. The Senate is in recess until Jan. 5, more than two weeks after the deadline. Even then, he’ll likely face an uphill battle for passage. But it allows Democrats to continue a pressure campaign for disclosure that Republicans had hoped to put behind them.
There have been few revelations in the tens of thousands of pages of discs that have been released so far. Some of the most anticipated records, such as interviews with FBI victims and internal memos that shed light on charging decisions, did not exist.
Nor were there any mentions of some powerful figures who were in Epstein’s orbit, such as Britain’s former Prince Andrew.
Some files were removed, then restored
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s decision to release only a fraction of the files by the deadline, as needed to protect survivors of sexual abuse from the disgruntled funder.
Blanche promised that the Trump administration would fulfill its obligations under the law. But he stressed that the department was forced to tread carefully while releasing thousands of documents that may include sensitive information. And he said legal precedent has long established that obligations to protect victims’ privacy allow authorities to exceed deadlines to ensure they are protected.
Blanche, the Justice Department chief, also defended her decision to remove several files related to the case from her public website, including a photo showing Trump, less than a day after they were posted.
The missing files, which were available on Friday but were not accessible until Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showed a series of photographs along a dresser and in drawers. In that picture, inside a drawer, among other photos, was a photo of Trump with Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Blanche said the documents were removed because of concerns they might also show Epstein’s victims. Blanche said Trump’s photo and the other documents will be republished once they are redacted, if necessary, to protect survivors.
Trump’s photo was returned to the public webpage without changes on Sunday after it was determined that concerns by some government workers that the victims may have been depicted in the image proved unfounded, the Justice Department said.
“We do not redact information about President Trump, about any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein, and this narrative, which has no basis in fact at all, is completely false,” Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Blanche said Trump, a Republican, has labeled the Epstein matter “a farce” because “there’s this narrative out there that the Justice Department is hiding and protecting information about him, which is completely false.”
“The Epstein files have been around for years and years and years and you haven’t heard a single peep from a single Democrat in the last four years and yet … all of a sudden, out of the blue, Senator Schumer suddenly cares about the Epstein files,” Blanche said. “That’s the joke.”
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Associated Press reporter Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.