By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s prime federal prosecutor mentioned Friday {that a} decide lacks the authority to nominate a impartial professional to supervise the general public launch of paperwork within the intercourse trafficking probe of financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
Choose Paul A. Engelmayer was instructed in a letter signed by U.S. Legal professional Jay Clayton that he should reject a request made earlier this week by the congressional cosponsors of the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act to nominate a impartial professional.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, say they’ve “urgent and grave concerns” concerning the gradual launch of solely a small variety of hundreds of thousands of paperwork that started final month.
In a submitting to the decide they mentioned they believed “criminal violations have taken place” within the launch course of.
Clayton, although, mentioned Khanna and Massie would not have standing with the court docket that will enable them to hunt the “extraordinary” reduction of the appointment of a particular grasp and impartial monitor.
Engelmayer “lacks the authority” to grant such a request, he mentioned, significantly as a result of the congressional representatives who made the request aren’t events to the felony case that led to Maxwell’s December 2021 intercourse trafficking conviction and subsequent 20-year jail sentence for recruiting women and girls for Epstein to abuse and aiding the abuse.
Epstein died in a federal jail in New York Metropolis in August 2019 as he awaited trial on intercourse trafficking expenses. The demise was dominated a suicide.
The Justice Division expects to replace the court docket “again shortly” concerning its progress in turning over paperwork from the Epstein and Maxwell investigative recordsdata, Clayton mentioned within the letter.
The Justice Division has mentioned the recordsdata’ launch was slowed by redactions required to guard the identities of abuse victims.
Of their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Division of Justice’s launch of solely 12,000 paperwork out of greater than 2 million paperwork being reviewed was a “flagrant violation” of the legislation’s launch necessities and had precipitated “serious trauma to survivors.”
“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” the congressmen mentioned as they requested for the appointment of an impartial monitor to make sure all paperwork and electronically saved info are instantly made public.
Additionally they really useful {that a} court-appointed monitor be given authority to organize stories concerning the true nature and extent of the doc manufacturing and whether or not improper redactions or conduct have taken place.
