NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell on Thursday urged a U.S. appeals court to block the release of a deposition that they have said would not only be embarrassing, but could destroy her chance for a fair trial on criminal charges she aided the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls.
Maxwell’s deposition was taken in April 2016 for a now-settled civil defamation lawsuit against the British socialite by Virginia Giuffre, who said Epstein kept her as a “sex slave” with Maxwell’s assistance.
In a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, Maxwell’s lawyers said unsealing the deposition and other documents from that case risked her due process right to a fair trial by an impartial jury.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler)
