#Judge to rule whether Ghislaine Maxwell court documents should be unsealed

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Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
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A Manhattan judge will rule Thursday on whether to unseal dozens of court documents that could expose a number of names linked to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell is fighting against the disclosure of the roughly 80 documents — which are part of a since-settled 2015 defamation lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

The filings include part of a seven-hour, 418-page deposition Maxwell gave in 2016, in which her lawyers say she was subjected to “intrusive” questions about her sex life.

They also include flight logs and police reports from Florida, where Epstein pleaded guilty in 2007 to state prostitution charges in exchange for 13 months in jail.

Maxwell’s lawyers have argued that unsealing the documents could jeopardize Maxwell’s criminal sex abuse case and expose many “non-parties.”

“The subject matter … is extremely personal, confidential and subject to considerable abuse by the media,” Maxwell’s lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca wrote last month.

Maxwell testified that a “very small part” of her job was to find “adult professional massage therapists” for Epstein, her longtime pal and former boyfriend.

Giuffre was 17 when she says she was recruited to give Epstein massages in Florida and allegedly sexually abused by him.

“So she was 17. At 17 you are allowed to be a professional masseuse and as far as I’m concerned, she was a professional masseuse,” Maxwell said in the deposition. “There is nothing inappropriate or incorrect about her coming at that time to give a massage.”

That portion of the testimony was among some 2,000 documents unsealed — a day before Epstein hanged himself in jail while locked up on sex-trafficking charges.

Manhattan federal court Judge Loretta Preska will make her ruling at a teleconference hearing Thursday morning.

Maxwell is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn following her July 2 arrest on charges she recruited and groomed young women to be sexually abused by Epstein. Prosecutors say she also took part in some of the abuse.

With Post wires