NEW YORK — Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska told Virginia Giuffre’s lawyers to destroy Jeffrey Epstein files they had gathered in civil discovery once a protective order ran out. The ruling landed on July 1, 2020. It told the lawyers who had spent years pulling Epstein’s operation into daylight to shred the paper, then file an affidavit proving they had done it.
Giuffre had sued Epstein and later Maxwell. That discovery file is how the public learned the architecture: recruiters, the New York mansion, Palm Beach, Little St. James, the flight logs. Alan Dershowitz, who Giuffre had accused and who later sued her for defamation, asked Preska for the whole cache. Preska called the request a “carpet bombing,” not a “targeted strike,” and ordered the copies destroyed anyway. Dershowitz said destroying evidence “risks destroying truth.” He and Giuffre dropped their dueling claims in 2022. Giuffre said she “may have made a mistake” identifying him. He has always denied the accusation.
The AEGIS Alliance published the documents the court wanted burned. They are on this site: the Giuffre exhibits and Epstein docs PDFs, and the larger motherlode.
Preska later reversed the secrecy. After Maxwell dropped her objection, the same judge ordered the broader Giuffre v. Maxwell docket unsealed. Batches began January 1, 2024 and named roughly 170 people previously listed as John or Jane Doe. Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 and is serving 20 years. The Supreme Court refused her appeal on October 6, 2025. On August 25, 2026 Judge Paul Engelmayer rejected her habeas bid as meritless and frivolous. Giuffre died in Western Australia on April 24, 2025. Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025. The Justice Department said on January 30, 2026 that it had posted more than 3.5 million additional pages — the opposite of destruction, years late, still redacted, still incomplete.
Related: the Maxwell arrest, the unredacted black book, and the 60 Minutes autopsy.
