Lawyers for Virginia Giuffre argued in 2016 that Ghislaine Maxwell had likely deleted emails related to the names of people involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring after court-ordered searches by Maxwell turned up zero hits in her inbox, according to newly unsealed documents in the Giuffre vs. Maxwell civil case, many of which have gone viral this week.
In one filing, which summarizes long back-and-forth negotiations between both sides, Giuffre’s lawyers find it hard to believe that it’s possible Maxwell could have run the searches in her email accounts and come up with nothing.
“[Maxwell] represented that she ran hundreds of search terms - including the names of people involved in the sex trafficking ring with whom she still associates in the present - and got zero ‘hits’ for any of them,” Giuffre’s lawyers wrote. “This is strong indicia that [Maxwell] … intentionally deleted documents. This strongly suggests that relevant documents either lie in the two email accounts that were not searched or … [that Maxwell] has deleted these communications … [Maxwell] does not state that the individual who examined … [her] devices attempted to recover [her] deleted email and other documents, or attempted to identify if and when a hard drive was wiped.”
The email searches were ordered by the court as part of discovery into a defamation lawsuit filed by Giuffre in 2015 against Maxwell in New York. Giuffre argued that Maxwell defamed her by calling her a liar in the press after Giuffre detailed her abuse by Epstein, Maxwell, and others in previous civil litigation in Florida.
Maxwell and Giuffre settled the case in 2017. Then, media led by the Miami Herald intervened in the case to get full access to the docket, which was stuffed with confidential filings because of the sensitive nature of the case.
According to arguments by Maxwell’s lawyers in the newly unsealed files, Maxwell repeatedly dragged her feet in producing documents, including by initially refusing to even do a search for Giuffre’s name in her email, claiming that would be too burdensome. When Maxwell finally did run searches, the fact that they came up empty, Guiffre’s lawyers said, strained credulity.
“The fact that this account - an account created for the sole purpose of enabling Defendant and others to communicate with Jeffrey Epstein - has no communications with Epstein or the other co-conspirators, is extremely strong indicia that someone destroyed those email communications,” Giuffre’s lawyers argued.
“It is possible that Defendant changed her mind over the weekend and reversed course. And, it is possible that Defendant did run those recently-contested terms over the weekend. And, it is possible that Defendant, over the weekend, gathered a team of lawyers to review the 'thousands of hits' yielded by those terms. And, it is possible that not a single one of Defendant’s thousands of documents bearing Ms. Giuffre’s name was relevant to this action. All these things are possible, but none is likely,” wrote Giuffre’s lawyers in a recently unsealed filing.
Emails exchanged between Meredith Schultz, one of Giuffre’s lawyers, and Laura Menninger, who represented Maxwell, detail some of the negotiations over which names should be included in the search of Maxwell’s communications. Maxwell’s lawyers argued for a drastic narrowing of the scope of search terms that they should be compelled to query, citing the burdens of an overly broad search which could generate a huge number of hits.
According to Schultz, there were 66 names in particular they were interested in finding any communications about in Maxwell’s email.
“Per our conversation, there are a number of individuals who we have reason to believe were either:
(1) victims of the ‘massages;’
(2) witnesses the ‘massages’ (including people who have knowledge of the ‘massages’); or
(3) perpetrators of the ‘massages,’ either by having a ‘massage’ themselves, arranging for another to have a ‘massage,’ or by arranging for a girl to give a ‘massage’ (either directly or through another girl),” Schultz wrote ahead of a bullet point list of those names.
Many of the names on that list are alleged victims or witnesses, though some of the names have also been linked to Epstein with varying allegations of complicity. One name is "Wexner," likely a reference to the billionaire owner of L Brands, Leslie Wexner, who ran Victoria’s Secret. In 1998, Wexner transferred Epstein his notorious Upper East Side townhouse, which recently sold for around $50 million, for $0. Wexner has also been accused by victims of Epstein and Maxwell of being the man responsible for Epstein’s rise.
Thomas Pritzker, who’s also on the list, is likely a reference to another billionaire, the hotel mogul Thomas Pritzker. Giuffre accused Pritzker of being one of the men she was trafficked to in a deposition, though Pritzker has denied the allegations consistently, and he’s never been criminally charged.
Schultz also wrote that Giuffre’s legal team was particularly interested in email exchanges with Alan Dershowitz, who had been Epstein’s attorney in a 2008 case in Florida where Epstein got a “sweetheart deal” when then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta declined to pursue federal charges against him—despite local police uncovering evidence of sexual abuse of dozens of underage girls.
“Please confirm that you have run the terms associated with their email addresses,” Schultz wrote.
Because of their doubts over whether Maxwell was deleting emails containing crucial information, Giuffre’s lawyers asked for an independent forensic expert to check her computer and all her email accounts to determine if she had been deleting the emails.
Schultz didn’t respond to an email with a list of questions about the negotiations, including whether they’d found definitive evidence that the emails had been deleted, or if an independent forensic review had ever taken place of Maxwell’s devices.
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