The ongoing saga of the unreleased Jeffrey Epstein files has focused on the materials the federal government has under lock and key: the trove of evidence and redacted documents collected and produced in the process of multiple criminal investigations of the billionaire child sex trafficker. What’s received less notice are the documents that remain under seal in federal court — and that one of the judges responsible for keeping them under wraps has, through her Wall Street lawyer spouse, a wealth of connections to Epstein-linked financial institutions.
Earlier this month, Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner that there was still “sealed material that should not be sealed” within the judicial system, charging that “there are judges who are protecting people. I know that for a fact.” Though he declined to name anyone, the Examiner found at least two Epstein-related cases in the Southern District of New York that remain under partial seal, one of which is the 2015 defamation suit against Epstein’s on-and-off lover and coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell — a case in which the decision to seal documents were made by senior judge Loretta Preska.
Preska’s role in the saga is colored by the fact that her spouse is a partner at one of New York’s preeminent Wall Street law firms. Thomas Kavaler is a fifty-year veteran of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a firm that, by its own description, “has thrived for a century by focusing on the most significant opportunities and complex challenges facing the top financial services firms and other multinational corporations.”
One of those challenges: when a major bank is sued by its own investors because its “particularly egregious” business relationship with a…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
