How a 6-year-long civil lawsuit from a Ghislaine Maxwell accuser unraveled Jeffrey Epstein mysteries and led to charges against the British socialite

• Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal case is the product of years of persistence from accusers seeking justice.
• One of the counts against Maxwell alleges she lied in a deposition for a civil lawsuit from an accuser.

Jury selection is underway in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial following more than a year of court battles with federal prosecutors, who charged her after disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself before he could stand trial on similar charges.

It's also the culmination of years of litigation from accusers, who sought justice even when the federal government stood against them.

In the trial, which is expected to stretch through December, a jury will deliver a verdict on charges that allege Maxwell sexually trafficked teenagers to Epstein and sexually abused them herself. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

When prosecutors first brought an indictment against Maxwell in July 2020, they also accused her of lying in a deposition about her actions and relationship with Epstein. But US District Judge Alison Nathan, who's overseeing the case, agreed to sever that charge in April and allow Maxwell to address it in a separate trial at a later date.

That deposition came in a civil lawsuit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who's arguably done more than any of Epstein's approximately 150 victims to illuminate his predation.

Giuffre v. Maxwell has produced thousands of pages of documents about Epstein

Giuffre filed the lawsuit in 2015, accusing Maxwell of defamation when the British socialite called her a liar over her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually abused her.

At the time, Maxwell was not yet indicted, and Epstein was a free man, splitting time between his massive properties in Florida, New York, New Mexico, London, and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein had served a short jail sentence in 2008 and 2009 for a state charge of procuring an underage girl for prostitution, as part of a plea deal that included a non-prosecution agreement that protected him from more serious federal charges.

The suit Giuffre brought against Maxwell was ultimately settled in 2017. But the case has enjoyed a long afterlife, and the litigation around it is so unusual and complex that the docket runs to more than 1,200 entries. Nine interested parties and intervenors have inserted themselves into the case over the years, including the government of the US Virgin Islands. The judge, Loretta Preska, continues to oversee the case, even though she partially retired in 2017 and has such a senior role in Manhattan US District Court that part of the building complex is named after her.

Before settling, Maxwell took two depositions and Giuffre submitted reams of evidence to court, almost all under seal. Giuffre's attorneys have fought tooth and nail to unseal the evidence and depositions, arguing they should have never been sealed in the first place, while Maxwell's lawyers have tried to keep them out of the public eye.

Other parties, like the Miami Herald, far-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, and attorney Alan Dershowitz also inserted themselves in the case, making arguments that the documents were in the public interest. Dershowitz has also asked for documents to be unsealed because he believes they would disprove misconduct claims Giuffre made against him on a later occasion.

The arguments over sealed materials are ongoing. After Maxwell was charged in 2020, attorneys for the Miami Herald and Giuffre successfully persuaded Preska to reveal more deposition excerpts, and Preska is poised to hear more arguments over sealed documents following Maxwell's trial.

If you've read any stories about Epstein in the past few years, there's a good chance they were at least partially based on documents unsealed in Giuffre's lawsuit. Those documents — flight logs, interview transcripts, emails, an unpublished memoir, and thousands of other pieces of evidence — have created a corpus of raw material that has given the public an understanding of Epstein's crimes and his relationships with powerful people.

The lawsuit material was central in the stories that brought Epstein's downfall

All that evidence came in handy for Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, who drew on the court documents for her series "Perversion of Justice," published in 2018. The stories detailed how Epstein's well-connected lawyers secured him an easy time in jail, and how federal prosecutors kept his victims in the dark about the non-prosecution agreement that protected him from more severe charges.

Several months before the series was published, the Herald acted as an intervenor in the case to persuade Preska to unseal certain documents in the public interest. Brown's reporting also draws on documents from other lawsuits brought by Epstein accusers — usually under "Jane Doe" pseudonyms — and interviews with several accusers, including Courtney Wild, who sued the federal government in a failed attempt to unravel Epstein's secret deal with prosecutors.

"Perversion of Justice" was an immediate sensation, published in the thick of the #MeToo conversation. Readers reacted with visceral disgust to the monstrous nature of the accusations against Epstein, and because it left the impression that a man with connections to powerful figures — including the likes of then-President Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and former Victoria's Secret CEO Les Wexner — could get away with anything.

Alexander Acosta, who struck the secret non-prosecution deal with Epstein when he was a US attorney in Miami, stepped down as the Trump administration's labor secretary in the wake of the story and has struggled to find a new job in the past two years.

And soon after Brown's report was published, the Justice Department opened a new investigation into Epstein. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York brought an indictment against him in July 2019, but Epstein killed himself in jail fewer than two months later. Several of the same prosecutors who brought the case against Epstein are also running the case against Maxwell.

Prosecutors say Maxwell lied about her relationship with Epstein

In an April 22, 2016, deposition taken for Giuffre's lawsuit, Maxwell said she didn't know Epstein had "a scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages;" didn't know of people under the age of 18 who she interacted with on Epstein's properties; wasn't aware of sex toys at Epstein's properties; didn't participate in orgies with Epstein; and had never given anyone a massage.

Prosecutors said her answers were all lies.

Though Giuffre has accused Maxwell of sexual misconduct, she is not named as a victim in the criminal case against the socialite. Prosecutors identified four accusers, only one of whom, Sarah Ransome, is expected to testify under her real name. (The Epstein Victims' Compensation Program identified "approximately 150" Epstein victims overall by the time it completed its work in August of this year.)

Giuffre filed additional civil lawsuits against Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew in the past few years. She alleges they participated in sexual misconduct along with Epstein and Maxwell. Dershowitz has pointed to Giuffre's absence in the criminal case as evidence that prosecutors don't take her seriously and says her shifting claims over time indicates that his rival David Boies, one of her attorneys, cooked up the allegations against him. Prince Andrew, who has avoided testifying to the FBI about his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell, has also denied misconduct allegations and claimed he never even met Giuffre.

Maxwell has claimed she had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes. Her lawyers claimed she was confused about what "sexual activities" meant during the deposition, and that she has been a scapegoat for Epstein ever since he killed himself in jail.

"The idea that she would be some kind of a Madame — it really is grotesque," her brother Ian Maxwell previously told Insider. "Jeffrey Epstein, it seems to me, led an immensely compartmentalized life."

The trial evidence will almost certainly illuminate the nature of the relationship between the two. Maxwell was instrumental in Epstein's sexual abuse, according to prosecutors.

"We know the quest for justice has been met with great disappointment for the victims, and that reliving these events is traumatic. The example set by the women involved has been a powerful one," FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said at the time of Maxwell's arrest. "They persevered against the rich and connected, and they did so without a badge, a gun, or a subpoena — and they stood together. I have no doubt the bravery exhibited by the women involved here has empowered others to speak up about the crimes of which they've been subjected."