Ghislaine Maxwell, who is under criminal investigation by the FBI over her connections with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, reportedly had her personal emails hacked and potentially damaging information about high profile people linked to Epstein’s sex trafficking case could become public.
“The revelation was made in a letter filed by the British socialite’s lawyers in the defamation case brought against her by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Guiffre,” The Daily Mail reported. “The letter was sent by Maxwell’s attorney, Ty Gee, on December 5 to New York federal court Judge Loretta A. Preska but made public last week. The letter addresses the materials that should remain sealed or redacted in the case.”
The letter states that documents that had been released to the public by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August did not thoroughly redact private information which allegedly led to the hack. The letter stated:
Despite the Second Circuit’s best efforts, it made serious mistakes. For example, it redacted a non-party’s name in one location but not another; so the media immediately gained access to that name.
As another example, it redacted Ms. Maxwell’s email address (which linked to her own domain name) in one location but not another; shortly afterward hackers breached the host computer.
The Mail speculated that “the email security breach means that 58-year-old Maxwell’s emails could be sold or leaked to the public and potentially reveal more details about individuals connected to Epstein.”
Another British publication, The Telegraph, reported that there was even speculation that a “a rogue state” may have been behind the hack.
The Telegraph also noted that her attorneys in the U.S. were fighting to prevent the release of over 8,500 additional documents that are “said to contain damaging new sex claims about Epstein’s vast network of celebrity friends.”
“It appears from her email address, which the Telegraph is choosing not to publish, that Ms Maxwell had set up her own secret mail server rather than entrusting her messages to major providers like Google or Yahoo. The server appears to have been run through a New York-based website registered under the name Jennifer Turner, an apparent pseudonym,” The Telegraph reported. “Running a personal server can offer added legal protection against handover requests from law enforcement, but it can also leave emails more vulnerable to hackers.”
In late December, Reuters first reported that the FBI had opened a criminal investigation into Maxwell:
The FBI is investigating British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and several other people linked to U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
They said a principal focus of the FBI’s investigation is Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein, and other “people who facilitated” Epstein’s allegedly illegal behavior.
Maxwell reportedly has so much “dirt” on high profile people that she “believes she will escape prosecution and return to her high society party life once ‘the dust has settled’, according to a pal of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged madam,” The Sun reported.