Judge Rules Lawyers Who Prosecuted Epstein for Sex Crimes Must “Destroy” Jeffrey Epstein Files
NEW YORK – A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that lawyers for Virginia Giuffre who had pursued Jeffrey Epstein and his circle in civil court must destroy files they had gathered on him.
In 2015 Giuffre’s attorneys obtained information about Epstein as part of a 2015 civil suit that allegedly contained the names of people who Epstein had been conducting business with, NewsWeek.com reports.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska made the decision that Giuffre’s lawyers had improperly obtained Epstein documents. The judge noted that the protective order had expired, and was only valid during the proceedings in the civil lawsuit, which was already settled. All the information in the files “shall be destroyed,” Preska wrote according to NewsWeek.com.
Judge Preska is also requiring the lawyers to document that the files are destroyed. “Counsel shall submit an affidavit detailing the steps taken to do so,” Preska’s ruling mentioned.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz had requested to gain access to the documents, and Preska’s ruling came after that request. Dershowitz has been accused by Giuffre of being one of the men who Epstein forced her into having sexual relations with. Giuffre was later sued by Dershowitz in 2019 for defamation. Dershowitz has made the claim that the files on Epstein would help his defense.
Dershowitz didn’t only desire to see certain files, he wanted to see all of them, which Preska said wasn’t just a “targeted strike” but was a “carpet bombing.” Dershowitz sent a statement to NewsWeek.com on Thursday and said, “the evidence should remain intact.”
“I oppose the destruction of evidence that may contain smoking gun proof that my false accuser made up her story,” Dershowitz stated according to NewsWeek.com. “I want all the evidence preserved because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I did nothing wrong. The evidence to be destroyed may also contain a proof of wrongdoing by others. It should be preserved for appeal and for history. Destroying evidence risks destroying truth.”
Epstein was indicted and arrested in 2019 when he returned from a vacation in France. The indictment accused Epstein of “sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations.” Epstein was also accused of “creating a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit.” There was also a safe inside Epstein’s Manhattan home where investigators found incriminating photos of underage girls who were naked.
Giuffre alleged that Epstein’s lover, Ghislaine Maxwell brought her into contact with Epstein. Giuffre made allegations that while she was in Epstein’s circle, she had sex with Prince Andrew when she was at the age of 17, NewsWeek.com wrote. Prince Andrew gave a statement in 2019 and vehemently denied these allegations.
In Epstein’s 2019 hearing, he pleaded not guilty to the charges. While he waited to go on trial, the official story is that Epstein hung himself in his jail cell, but there is reason to believe that Epstein didn’t kill themself. Maxwell was arrested and charged this week.
In the years that followed, the fight over these same records took a sharp turn in the opposite direction. The 2015 case at the center of the destruction order was the now-settled defamation lawsuit Giuffre had brought against Maxwell, and Maxwell’s own attorneys eventually dropped their objection to unsealing the records in early 2022. In December 2023, Judge Loretta Preska, the same jurist who had ordered the earlier destruction of improperly held copies, ruled there was no longer any legal justification for keeping more than 150 names hidden, and ordered the broader file to be unsealed. Beginning on January 1, 2024, the documents rolled out in batches and ultimately identified roughly 170 individuals previously listed only as “John” or “Jane Doe,” while certain minor victims remained redacted to protect their privacy. The files reintroduced a long list of figures already publicly tied to Epstein, among them Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton, former President Donald Trump, and the late modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, though much of the material restated what had already surfaced in earlier reporting rather than revealing genuinely new wrongdoing.
The defamation battle between Giuffre and Alan Dershowitz, which had driven part of the original document dispute, ended in 2022 when both sides dropped their dueling claims; Giuffre said at the time that she “may have made a mistake” in identifying Dershowitz, who has consistently denied her accusations. Ghislaine Maxwell was later convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Virginia Giuffre, who became one of the most prominent advocates for survivors of sex trafficking, died in Western Australia on April 25, 2025, at the age of 41; her family said she had taken her own life after a lifetime affected by abuse. Her testimony and public advocacy were widely credited with helping drive the investigations that led to Maxwell’s conviction.
