Maxwell Seeks Emergency Stay Halting Release of Her Testimony

(Bloomberg) -- Former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal appeals court for an emergency order blocking the public release of her testimony and other documents in a civil lawsuit.

Maxwell, who separately faces federal sex-trafficking charges, told a Manhattan-based appeals court Thursday that her ability to get a fair trial in the criminal case will be “irreparably harmed” if her testimony and other evidence in the civil suit is made public, as a judge has ordered.

“It will forever let the cat out of the bag,” Maxwell’s lawyers wrote in a filing.

In the criminal case, Maxwell, 58, is accused of luring girls as young as 14 for her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. She denies wrongdoing and is being held in a federal lockup in New York.

In the now-settled civil case, a judge has ordered some sealed documents to be released on Thursday and others, including her sworn testimony, to be made public on Aug. 3. That suit was brought by Virginia Giuffre, who claims Maxwell and Epstein lured her into becoming the financier’s sex slave when she was 16. Giuffre sued Maxwell for calling her account “obvious lies.”

Last year, the appeals court ordered some of the documents in the case unsealed. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who presided over the lawsuit, last week directed the public disclosure of more records.

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