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1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
2 ------------------------------x
3 VIRGINIA L. GIUFFRE,
4 Plaintiff,
5 v. 15 Civ. 7433 (RWS)
6 GHISLAINE MAXWELL,
7 Defendant. Oral Argument
8 ------------------------------x
New York, N.Y.
9 March 30, 2017
12:08 p.m.
10
Before:
11
HON. ROBERT W. SWEET,
12
District Judge
13
APPEARANCES
14
BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER LLP
15 Attorneys for Plaintiff
BY: SIGRID S. McCAWLEY, ESQ.
16 MEREDITH L. SCHULTZ, ESQ.
17 S.J. QUINNEY COLLEGE OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
For Plaintiff
18 BY: PAUL G. CASSELL, ESQ.
19 FARMER, JAFFE, WEISSING, EDWARDS, FISTOS, LEHRMAN, P.L.
Attorneys for Plaintiff
20 BY: BRADLEY J. EDWARDS, ESQ.
21 HADDON, MORGAN AND FOREMAN, P.C.
Attorneys for Defendant
22 BY: JEFFREY S. PAGLIUCA, ESQ.
LAURA A. MENNINGER, ESQ.
23
24
25
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1
2 (Case called)
3 THE COURT: We have a problem, folks. By my count --
4 and of course one can count differently depending on how you
5 treat these matters, but one count I have is that we have 45
6 motions before me. That may not be entirely accurate, but it's
7 not too far off.
8 Here's my suggestion. Well, first of all, I think,
9 though you have shown absolutely no mercy to me, I am prepared
10 to show a little mercy to you. Translated, if you want to, we
11 can schedule this so you can have lunch. On the other hand, if
12 you don't want lunch, that's okay. I can endure.
13 By the way, the Epstein motion will go over to
14 tomorrow because we were told, if I understand it correctly,
15 that they didn't know it was on for today. How that ignorance
16 exists, I don't know, but anyhow, we'll put that over to
17 tomorrow.
18 So what I would suggest is that today -- and today
19 ends, for our joint effort, at 3:30 -- the defendant's motion
20 with respect to the supplemental reports of Jansen and Kliman;
21 the 302 motion; and there are three that seem to me to go
22 together -- the references to the Florida action, the CVRA
23 action; the Epstein plea agreement and nonprosecution, and
24 registration; and the victim notification letter. Seems to me
25 all those present same of the same basic problems, and I'll
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1 hear those together. And then the defendant's motion with
2 respect to Giuffre's sexual history and the Giuffre motion on
3 Maxwell's involvement with Epstein's activities.
4 So that's my thought. We could go say until 1:30 and
5 then break for lunch, resume at 2:30 and go another hour, or go
6 straight through. Why don't you all confer, see what you want
7 to do. And the remainder, we can do tomorrow. We'll start at
8 10:00. Do you all want to confer for a moment and see what you
9 want to do?
10 MS. McCAWLEY: Well, your Honor, on our part, we want
11 to spend as much time getting through this today as we can, so
12 we would prefer not to take a lunch break because there are so
13 many things we need to get through, we'd want to try to utilize
14 as much of your time as we can.
15 THE COURT: Okay. No lunch. Go. Defendant's motion
16 with respect to the supplemental reports.
17 MS. McCAWLEY: Your Honor, could I just have one point
18 of clarification. I'm sorry. With respect to plaintiff's
19 omnibus motion, we were planning to argue that today. That has
20 several subparts.
21 THE COURT: Well, why don't we leave that for
22 tomorrow.
23 MS. MENNINGER: Your Honor, I would like to leave it
24 for tomorrow. There was a 60-page reply that was served on
25 Monday night and so if we could just have until tomorrow on
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1 that, I would appreciate it.
2 There was a 60-page reply filed on that motion on
3 Monday night.
4 THE COURT: Does that surprise you? Doesn't surprise
5 me.
6 MS. MENNINGER: No. It doesn't.
7 THE COURT: Well, okay.
8 MS. MENNINGER: But if we could do it tomorrow, I'd
9 appreciate it.
10 THE COURT: Well, I was planning to, wasn't I? Yes.
11 MS. MENNINGER: I agree with your Honor.
12 THE COURT: Yes. Okay.
13 MR. PAGLIUCA: Good afternoon again, your Honor.
14 THE COURT: Good afternoon.
15 Yes.
16 MR. PAGLIUCA: Your Honor, with regard to the motion
17 on the late-disclosed supplemental report of Jansen and the
18 video exhibit of Dr. Kliman, first, I'd like to start with
19 Kliman, if I could.
20 Dr. Kliman is a summary witness who has no firsthand
21 knowledge about the facts associated with this case. He's been
22 proffered as an expert in psychiatry. And the majority of his
23 opinions don't really relate to psychiatry; they relate to
24 credibility issues of the plaintiff in this case. Replete
25 through the opinion, original opinion that he offered, are a
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1 number of what I deem to be improper vouching.
2 THE COURT: Let's get to the supplemental reports.
3 I've read the papers on the Daubert aspect and I have some
4 familiarity with the report, but let's get to the supplemental.
5 MR. PAGLIUCA: I will, your Honor. And I start there
6 because that is a primary problem with the -- it's not a
7 supplemental report. I mean, what happened was, in terms of
8 the backdrop here --
9 THE COURT: Let me see if I can shorthand this. What
10 you're complaining about is not the video of Giuffre but the
11 summary.
12 MR. PAGLIUCA: I'm complaining about both, your Honor.
13 And let me explain why.
14 THE COURT: Okay. Forget about the summary for a
15 moment. You didn't get the video at the time the report was
16 filed. You got the report, I think it was September, whenever
17 it was. You didn't get the video, but you did get it before
18 the deposition.
19 MR. PAGLIUCA: Here's the distinction I need the Court
20 to understand. What we got after the report was filed was
21 approximately four hours of video conducted over a two-day time
22 frame. So there's a large portion of video conducted over a
23 two-day time frame. When I arrived at Dr. Kliman's office on
24 November 17th, I believe it was --
25 THE COURT: Well, you were in San Francisco, so what's
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1 wrong with that?
2 MR. PAGLIUCA: I love San Francisco, if I could
3 actually spend some time there, but going from an airport to a
4 hotel and Dr. Kliman's office was not my idea of a good time.
5 So we get there, and I get a 15-megabyte flash drive,
6 which has a lot of things on it, including something I've never
7 seen before.
8 THE COURT: By the way, so was that as a result of a
9 request of yours?
10 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes.
11 THE COURT: Oh.
12 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes. We had requested, and in fact
13 issued a subpoena, for all of Dr. Kliman's materials, and, you
14 know, I don't mind things coming in a little bit late in these
15 regards because I can prepare for the deposition. But the
16 problem, your Honor, is, the morning of the deposition, I get
17 this --
18 THE COURT: No. I know.
19 MR. PAGLIUCA: Okay. And it is not simply a --
20 THE COURT: I understand. You got it right just
21 before.
22 MR. PAGLIUCA: But your Honor, this is not clear in
23 the papers, and indulge me, please, for one moment. The video
24 that I get when I get there is a professionally edited video,
25 and it takes different segments of what I was previously
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1 provided and it compiles it in, you know, almost a documentary
2 fashion, if you will. And so we have the plaintiff, in
3 different clips, from different days, and different times,
4 saying things --
5 THE COURT: Of course the other problem is, so that's
6 in September. When was this, late September?
7 MR. PAGLIUCA: No. November 17th.
8 THE COURT: November.
9 MR. PAGLIUCA: So the reports are due in September, we
10 get this in --
11 THE COURT: It would have been nice to have this issue
12 raised then, not now.
13 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, your Honor, I said to them at the
14 time, you know, I don't believe this is admissible and I don't
15 need to do anything about it. So it's not my -- they're the
16 ones who are not in compliance with the rule, not me. And so
17 if you want to do something about it, I think you need to be
18 prophylactic.
19 THE COURT: Okay. Anything else you want to tell me?
20 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes, your Honor. Embedded in this
21 edited footage are nine separate statements, advocacy
22 statements by Kliman, such as calling Ms. Maxwell a
23 perpetrator, someone he's never met before, but he feels free
24 to call her a perpetrator in the middle of this videotape. He
25 feels free to opine, you know, in these editorial comments of
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1 his that --
2 THE COURT: That's a whole different issue. Right?
3 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes. I agree.
4 And finally, your Honor, on this Kliman issue, it
5 seems to me that all of this is -- well, let me back up. Here
6 are the reasons why it's prejudicial, and I don't think we can
7 just say, this is a videotape, so what? I never had the
8 opportunity, because the deadlines expired for experts, to give
9 the edited version to any other expert to analyze the footage,
10 to compare it to the original footage, to see how it was
11 filmed; never had the opportunity to give it to any
12 psychological expert to examine those particular clips and how
13 they were put together.
14 THE COURT: Of course, we could have extended the
15 deadlines if you had wanted.
16 MR. PAGLIUCA: Your Honor, again, I'm not the person
17 who didn't comply with the rule. It's not on me to do that, in
18 my view.
19 THE COURT: Okay.
20 MR. PAGLIUCA: So that's Kliman, your Honor.
21 THE COURT: Okay.
22 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, and by the way, it's also
23 cumulative testimony. I don't believe that it would be
24 appropriate for the plaintiffs to testify, then have Kliman
25 testify, and then during Kliman's testimony there's this staged
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1 presentation in front of Kliman that he gets to then comment
2 on. And so really what we're doing is we're trying to clean up
3 the in-court testimony by an out-of-court statement to this
4 psychologist that he then gets to stop and opine on for the
5 jury during the middle of all of this. That seems to be
6 cumulative. It's also prejudicial, and it also denies my
7 ability to confront and cross-examine a witness who is
8 appearing for the camera and acting. So that's Kliman.
9 Jansen, your Honor, is a true new report. Dr. Jansen
10 issued his report. We then issue a rebuttal report to
11 Dr. Jansen in which our expert points out that Dr. Jansen
12 didn't record any of the data that he purportedly relies on.
13 So right after we issue our rebuttal report, we get new data
14 from Dr. Jansen, and it's curious because the report by Jansen
15 is written on September 9th but the data that we then get, in
16 response to our subpoena, is November 2nd. That's fine. I
17 go take his deposition, and during his deposition I'm asking
18 him questions about, well, you know, how do you come up with
19 this number? And he can't give me an answer, because he
20 doesn't have any of the material that he purportedly relied on
21 to issue the opinion. So I'm feeling pretty good about all
22 this when we leave because I have a guy who issues a report
23 that doesn't have any underlying data to support it and can't
24 explain to me what these different numbers are and where they
25 came from. You know, two weeks later, I get in the mail, or
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1 email, a supplemental report that is materially different than
2 the report that I deposed this person on. And, you know,
3 materially how? I mean, they want to say, oh, no, he's just
4 doing ongoing work here. Well, the alleged number of articles
5 has more than doubled in his review. The alleged unique users,
6 which is his phrase for somebody who went on a website
7 somewhere, is more than 10 million more, and the other number,
8 which is the number of publications, has also more than
9 doubled. So, you know, that is patently unfair, your Honor, to
10 have somebody go redo their report after they've been
11 cross-examined and come up with different opinions that I've
12 never been able to depose anyone on. That's the problem. They
13 should live with their opinion if it is admissible at all.
14 MS. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, this is Meredith Schultz for
15 Ms. Giuffre.
16 I'll address the Dr. Kliman report first. And what
17 defendant's briefing and what oral argument didn't make clear
18 is that in advance of the deposition, Dr. Kliman provided
19 defense counsel the entire videotaped interview with Ms.
20 Giuffre. They had all the footage already.
21 THE COURT: Wait. In fairness, in advance of the
22 deposition by ten minutes.
23 MS. SCHULTZ: Sorry, your Honor. No. I think that's
24 a misunderstanding. What they received "ten minutes before"
25 were clips of the video. The entire video was produced well in
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1 advance of the deposition. What they're complaining about is
2 that from that entire video certain segments were produced. So
3 they already had that material already. They just didn't have
4 it in a clip form.
5 THE COURT: So you say that the production of the
6 entire video was timely.
7 MS. SCHULTZ: Yes, your Honor. And I would also say
8 that the supplement was timely too. What was on that flash
9 drive, 98 percent of that had already been produced before
10 because they had the full-length video. It did include clips
11 that Dr. Kliman made with subtitles. And then also it had some
12 new billing statements that were more updated that were
13 produced in accordance to Rule 26's requirements to supplement
14 reports. So they had the long-form video ahead of the
15 deposition. The clips of the videos that they already had is
16 what they're complaining about here, and I don't think the
17 briefing makes that clear.
18 With regard to Dr. Jansen, I think there are also some
19 misunderstandings there. The bottom line is that it is very
20 reasonable to get the results that he did in his supplement.
21 And it's based on how search engines index web content. So in
22 the briefing, it says, oh, the supplemental report has articles
23 from before the first report and so it's illegitimate. That's
24 not a correct argument. And I think it's easily confused
25 because of how search engines work. Basically documents that
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1 are the supplemental report, articles prior to September 9th,
2 you know, if one does two searches on different days on a
3 search engine, it's very reasonable to retrieve results during
4 the second search that were published prior to the first
5 search. It all depends on when the search engine added that
6 content to its search index. So that's how search engines
7 work. It's not going to have every single article on that day.
8 It has to be added to the index. So the methodology employed
9 was exactly the same as was employed in the first report. No
10 expert has stated otherwise. And its methodology is rock
11 solid.
12 Counsel for defendant complained about no underlining
13 data, but that's a little -- it's a misstatement. The expert
14 provided what traffic services were used, provided the website
15 domains, the URLs, provided the traffic numbers as well. So
16 the data is there. So employing the exact same methodology to
17 supplement the report, it's no surprise that additional
18 articles are going to come up. For example, search engines
19 will take a major website like the New York Times and crawl
20 that multiple times a day to get new articles. Articles on
21 more obscure websites won't be crawled by the search engine at
22 the same rate. So doing a search on two different days, you
23 are necessarily going to have two different results. And it
24 will even pick up results that predate the first search,
25 because it hasn't been crawled yet by the search engine that
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1 you're using.
2 I know this is a little bit hypertechnical, but I
3 think that understanding is important to understand why a
4 supplemental report varies from the original report. If you
5 did one today, you'd probably have even more articles.
6 THE COURT: Anything else?
7 MS. SCHULTZ: That's all I have.
8 THE COURT: Okay. Let me ask you, defense --
9 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes, your Honor.
10 THE COURT: -- I gather from that, if I understand it,
11 that it's the edited version on the flash drive, or whatever
12 you call it, that's the one that you want excluded.
13 MR. PAGLIUCA: Correct. Your Honor, as I understand
14 it, that is a proposed trial exhibit, although we haven't had
15 an exhibit list yet. That is a specific rule that relates to
16 trial exhibits. And to be clear, your Honor, there were four
17 separate video clips that were late provided that I didn't
18 complain about because I had them in advance of the deposition.
19 Those four video clips total roughly four hours, give or take.
20 From that four hours there was a professionally made exhibit
21 that -- there are different camera angles displayed in this,
22 the plaintiff has makeup on, the plaintiff is dressed in a
23 suit. It is clearly edited to be an advocacy piece, your
24 Honor. And so that is what was given to me the morning of and
25 I didn't have an opportunity to look at it or cross-examine on
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1 it or give it to anybody to evaluate. That's the problem.
2 THE COURT: Okay. Do you want to add anything on
3 the --
4 MR. PAGLIUCA: On Jansen?
5 THE COURT: Jansen?
6 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes. I'm not mistaken and there is no
7 misunderstanding here, your Honor. Jansen redid his report to
8 try to take care of the deficiencies in the original report,
9 the deficiencies pointed out in his deposition, and he ended up
10 with substantially different results. That's point number one.
11 Point number two is, it is not accurate to say that
12 the additional 170 articles or multiples of sites postdated his
13 deposition because in the reply -- and it's a bit of a
14 confusing chart, I might add, your Honor. We have the dates of
15 these publications which all show that they predate his
16 deposition and his report, or the majority of them. So there's
17 no excuse for it.
18 THE COURT: Thank you.
19 Next. 302.
20 MS. MENNINGER: Good afternoon, your Honor.
21 As you know, the 302 statement we're talking about
22 here purports to be from an interview with the FBI in 2011
23 about events supposedly occurring in 1997 through 2002, so some
24 14 years later, and the report itself was purportedly written
25 two years after the interview, in 2013. It is so heavily
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1 redacted, we have no idea who the author of the report is.
2 THE COURT: What's the provenance of this report that
3 we're talking about?
4 MS. MENNINGER: It showed up in my discovery.
5 THE COURT: You mean the plaintiff had it?
6 MS. MENNINGER: Plaintiff had it, plaintiff provided
7 it to us in discovery, plaintiff has not explained where it
8 came from.
9 THE COURT: End of story.
10 MS. MENNINGER: Right. The author is redacted, your
11 Honor. I don't know who authored the report.
12 THE COURT: Right. All we know about it is that she
13 had a copy of it.
14 MS. MENNINGER: Apparently someone did and put it into
15 the discovery. I don't know who had it or where they got it.
16 THE COURT: Well, yes. Okay. All right.
17 MS. MENNINGER: So, you know, alluding to that point,
18 your Honor, there are so many redactions, it's unclear who
19 wrote the report, but more importantly, the content of the
20 report is so heavily redacted, we don't know what she's saying.
21 I mean, there are pages where there are just sentence
22 fragments. And so the problem, your Honor, which seems clear
23 to me, is that, to the extent there are statements in there,
24 they are hearsay statements. They are out of court. And so we
25 raised that in our motion in limine, your Honor.
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1 In response, the plaintiffs submitted that they're not
2 trying to offer this report for the truth. They're offering it
3 for the fact that their client, they say, reported this
4 information to law enforcement, in 2011. Well, you don't need
5 the report for her to get on the stand and testify that she met
6 with FBI agents in 2011. She can just say that without the
7 report itself coming in. And even if it were to come in, it's
8 unclear why anything in the report is relevant to a disputed
9 fact in our case. We don't know what she reported. We don't
10 see the names of people in there. We can't tell what she said.
11 And because of the redactions, we don't know who she said it
12 to, etc. So we can't talk to that unknown person that's
13 redacted. She apparently must know who she talked to, and she
14 didn't disclose that person, for example, in her Rule 26
15 disclosures, your Honor, so if she talked to someone about the
16 facts of this case, didn't put them in her Rule 26 disclosures,
17 then, your Honor, she's denied us the ability to get in touch
18 with that person.
19 As a backup and completely different argument to
20 "we're not offering it for the truth of the matter,"
21 plaintiff's second argument is that they are offering it for
22 the truth of the matter as a public record under 803(8). Your
23 Honor, we already discussed for you why the document lacks
24 trustworthiness. The source of the information is her. It's
25 self-serving, to the extent it is a statement of fact, because
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1 I can't tell what it says. It would be self-serving. So your
2 Honor, it essentially puts plaintiff in the position of getting
3 on the stand and trying to say what she said to the FBI agent
4 and denying us the ability, because of the redactions, to
5 cross-examine her about what she actually said because the
6 redactions cover up the content for the most part.
7 Your Honor, prior consistent statements, I think our
8 law is clear in the brief that it has to be a specific
9 statement of fact and it has to be predating the motive to lie.
10 This statement came after she had already sold her story to the
11 reporter -- about a month later, I believe. So your Honor, her
12 motive to lie had already arisen at the time it says that this
13 interview was given, and that's all we really know about it.
14 Because the interview with the reporter is actually contained
15 in the FBI statement.
16 MS. McCAWLEY: Good morning, your Honor. It's Sigrid
17 McCawley on behalf of Virginia Giuffre.
18 Your Honor, this is not some obscure document that the
19 Court would not recognize. I'd like to pass up some copies for
20 your Honor. This is an FBI 302 report. It contains the seal
21 of the FBI at the top of it. It contains the date. Can I
22 approach, please.
23 It's a document that's commonly used when FBI agents
24 are conducting their investigations; in fact, it's required.
25 It indicates that the signer of the document, the recorder of
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1 the document, was the individual who conducted the interview.
2 And I'd like to clarify. A statement was made that we
3 have not indicated who was involved in this FBI 302. We
4 produced email traffic about the meeting and about the FBI
5 agents involved in this meeting in discovery, probably nine
6 months ago, your Honor. This FBI 302 has all of the
7 trustworthiness that goes along with one of these documents.
8 Again, it has the seal and everything that is required. Your
9 Honor, it did come to us as a result of a FOIA request that we
10 sent. It is, your Honor, produced in accordance with how the
11 FBI 302s are typically kept. This is a public record under
12 803(8)(a), your Honor.
13 To be clear, it's actually a case that the defendants
14 cited in their brief, Upstate Shredding, which is a Southern
15 District of New York case, your Honor, that holds that these
16 types of reports do come into evidence under the public record
17 exception. Similarly, the Spanierman case, which is also, your
18 Honor, a Southern District of New York case, similarly holds
19 FBI records like the one that we are seeking to introduce are
20 entered into evidence under this public records exception.
21 So let's take a look at it. Again, at the top
22 right-hand corner you're going to see the FBI seal, you're
23 going to see the date, and you are going to see a lot of detail
24 about the client's interview during this interview. And as you
25 know, your Honor, this comes into play because the FBI was
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1 continuing to investigate Epstein. They flew to Australia to
2 interview our client. She gave her witness statement to them
3 along with other evidence that she produced to them, and that's
4 recorded in this. And why is that important? That's important
5 because in this very case, the defendants have claimed that
6 other witnesses who did not report to law enforcement is
7 problematic. So we want to be able to show this jury that yes,
8 our client did report this to law enforcement, she gave a
9 detailed statement to the FBI about what happened to her during
10 her time with the defendant and Epstein, and it does outline
11 those details, as you'll see looking through it. Of course
12 there are redactions, but that doesn't make the document
13 something that shouldn't be shown to the jury. In fact, it
14 needs to be shown to the jury to show that our client did
15 report her allegations to law enforcement and cooperated with
16 law enforcement. So your Honor, it comes in for that, which is
17 a nonhearsay purpose, to show simply that she did report to
18 authorities, but it also comes in under the hearsay exception
19 of 803(8)(a), so that it can come in as a public record.
20 And let's just look at the prongs of that test. A
21 requires that it was an office activity. This is something
22 that the FBI regularly does. It regularly conducts
23 investigations, meetings with individuals and then records them
24 in these 302s. It was a matter done under their legal duty to
25 report. The FBI is required to have these forms, and that is
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1 why it was recorded in this manner, your Honor. And it also
2 has no indications of a lack of trustworthiness. Again, it
3 says that the writer of the report, on the final page, was the
4 interviewee. They make hay about the dates when the interview
5 was versus the date of recording. That's not unusual either,
6 your Honor. In the course of their work they will record
7 information, interview witnesses, and then make their official
8 recording at the time that it's needed, and that is what
9 happened here, your Honor. So it meets all of the
10 trustworthiness prongs that are necessary for an 803 public
11 record, your Honor, and we believe that it should come in both
12 under that as a hearsay exception and as nonhearsay to show
13 that Ms. Giuffre did report her allegations to law enforcement
14 and cooperated with law enforcement.
15 Thank you, your Honor.
16 MS. MENNINGER: What you did not just hear is -- well,
17 we don't have the FOIA request. We just have counsel
18 testifying that they issued a FOIA request and got this
19 document. We don't know who redacted the document. We don't
20 know whether that was plaintiff's counsel or some other person
21 before they got the document. We don't know when they got it.
22 She's sitting here and telling your Honor she wants to
23 introduce it for the fact that it was reported to law
24 enforcement. Your Honor, this was supposedly a 2011 interview
25 talking about events that happened, as I just mentioned, in
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1 1997 through 2002, so this is not some contemporaneous report
2 to law enforcement. We're talking about, at a minimum, an
3 11-year gap between some report to law enforcement. And you
4 don't need the document. Plaintiff can testify that she talked
5 to the FBI agents when she gets on the stand and she can say
6 she did that in March 2011. But the report itself is nothing
7 but hearsay offered for the truth of the matters asserted, your
8 Honor. I find it wholly improbable, the testimony -- and I'll
9 call it testimony -- by plaintiff's counsel that it's "not
10 unusual" for the FBI to delay writing a report for two years.
11 Your Honor, I practice in this area. I can tell you, it is
12 quite unusual, in my experience, to have an FBI report
13 generated two years after an interview. Was it generated from
14 a recording, or was it generated from memory? Was it generated
15 from notes? We have no idea, because you know what, we don't
16 know who it is that wrote the report that plaintiff says she
17 wants to introduce, and she hasn't provided that person's name.
18 Counsel said that there is no indications of a lack of
19 trustworthiness. In addition to the fact that we don't know
20 its provenance or where it came from, we don't know who wrote
21 it, we don't know when it was written or how, we don't know
22 what it actually says, because your Honor can see with your own
23 two eyes that the vast majority of the content is crossed out.
24 So if they introduce this evidence, we're going to have
25 plaintiff saying, well, what it says beneath that redaction is
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1 XYZ, and I'm going to have no way, your Honor, of
2 cross-examining her with regard to what's underneath the
3 redaction because we don't have it.
4 So your Honor, for all those reasons, it does not meet
5 the test for 803(8)(a). They have asserted, without any
6 substance or proof, that this was pursuant to an authorized
7 investigation. They have asserted that it was prepared in due
8 course after two years. There's no proof. We don't know who
9 wrote it. We don't know what was said. I can't really picture
10 a less reliable document, your Honor.
11 THE COURT: Okay. The CVRA action and the plea and
12 prosecution and so on, and the victim notification letter.
13 MR. PAGLIUCA: Your Honor, we've broken this up, but
14 when I stop, Ms. Menninger can -- I'll tag her and she can come
15 into the ring.
16 THE COURT: That's fine.
17 MR. PAGLIUCA: Your Honor, I'm addressing the CVRA
18 litigation motion, 669. I have to start with first, your
19 Honor, one of my apparently pet peeves in this litigation is
20 the point of all of the pleadings that are being referenced in
21 this particular motion are drafted and filed by the lawyers
22 that are sitting in this room, and it is troubling to me,
23 because when we're arguing about the admissibility of this and
24 what goes to the jury, it seemed inescapable to me that we are
25 then in the position of, whether it's by document or from the
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1 witness stand or from the podium, having lawyers offer facts to
2 a jury, statements to a jury, that they are going to be then
3 arguing are credible, and so we have this joinder motion,
4 drafted by Mr. Edwards and Mr. Cassell, that they would like to
5 introduce into evidence, whole cloth into evidence, that
6 contains the legal arguments and the statements of lawyers,
7 these lawyers, in a motion in another courtroom, of which they
8 will then be arguing to a jury that's all true. And so I don't
9 see how that's any different than a lawyer testifying in court,
10 and so that's, to me, part of the backdrop to this.
11 I also submit, your Honor, that the vast majority --
12 well, frankly, all of these pleadings are not relevant to this
13 action, and I say that because the plaintiffs continue to turn
14 the issue of what's at issue in this case around. They have
15 the burden of proving that what Ms. Maxwell said was false.
16 That's what is at issue. We have to look at Ms. Maxwell's
17 statement issued by Barden and Gow and then go backwards from
18 there. And the burden on the plaintiff is proving falsity of
19 that statement. It is not the situation where -- which is what
20 they're trying to do is to say we have to prove what we said
21 was true, what we the lawyers said was true, and therefore, we
22 get to prove whatever we want to in connection with this
23 litigation. And so it seems to me that we have turned all of
24 this on its head, because instead of saying, the issue is, can
25 the plaintiff meet its burden to prove the statement issued by
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1 Gow and Barden on Maxwell's behalf was false, they are now
2 saying, we want to prove whatever we want to prove is true and
3 that needs to be the focus of this litigation.
4 So with that as the context and the backdrop, your
5 Honor, I simply don't understand or see how any of these
6 pleadings are (A) relevant to this case, and (B) I don't see it
7 or understand how they're simply not self-serving
8 lawyer-vouchered statements, and I haven't heard any reason
9 from the plaintiff, either orally or in writing, as to exactly
10 how the introduction of these documents would be relevant to
11 prove that Ms. Maxwell's statement was false.
12 THE COURT: But look, the problem obviously is that
13 this is the document to which the defendant was responding, or
14 at least portions of it.
15 MR. PAGLIUCA: Can I respond to that, your Honor?
16 THE COURT: Yes.
17 MR. PAGLIUCA: I think that that's what they would
18 like everyone to believe, but indeed, what the plaintiff was
19 responding to were communications from the media about a
20 document, these documents, that she had never seen, and so the
21 factual backdrop here is that -- I mean, this doesn't get
22 dropped on Ms. Maxwell's doorstep in December of 2014. She's
23 getting calls from the media about, What do you have to say
24 about this thing that these lawyers filed in this case in
25 Florida? She is I think in England at the time. I don't
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1 recall, frankly, but I believe she was in England; or her
2 agents certainly are in England who are issuing this release.
3 And so it's not that Ms. Maxwell reads this and then the
4 lawyers issue their statement. So what she's responding to are
5 press reports and calls from the media. I think that's pretty
6 clear by Mr. Barden's declaration in the summary judgment
7 paperwork as well as Mr. Gow's deposition.
8 The other thing that I have been pondering, your
9 Honor, because this is a large problem for this case, is,
10 assume for a moment, your Honor, what you just said is
11 absolutely true, that she's responding to this pleading.
12 Well --
13 THE COURT: But she refers to Giuffre's statement, or
14 allegations.
15 MR. PAGLIUCA: Right.
16 THE COURT: And so it's those allegations that she's
17 responding to.
18 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, the difficulty I have, your
19 Honor, and I think it's going to be a difficulty we're living
20 with here --
21 THE COURT: But that's what the statement is. And --
22 MR. PAGLIUCA: You asked a question during the summary
23 judgment hearing, and it's a great question: What are the
24 allegations? And I think that's at the heart of dealing with
25 the difficulty in a lot of these issues because as I stand here
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1 today, a year plus into this case, I don't know what they were.
2 And --
3 THE COURT: But we do know in this instance. We know
4 exactly what they are.
5 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, but let me push back on this for
6 a second, your Honor, because what we're talking about is not a
7 statement by the plaintiff. If that's what we're talking
8 about. If we're talking about this joinder motion, the Jane
9 Doe 102 joinder motion is a legal pleading filed by these two
10 lawyers. And there are no quotation marks in this thing --
11 THE COURT: Of course. That's what an allegation is.
12 MR. PAGLIUCA: Yes, but there are no quotation marks
13 in this. There are no direct quotes. There is a lot of legal
14 hyperbole and conjecture throughout the entire pleading. There
15 are statements by counsel contained in the pleading. And so I
16 asked a question rhetorically: What's she responding to? Is
17 she defaming Mr. Edwards or Mr. Cassell, or is she defaming the
18 plaintiff? When you parse through this pleading, you could be
19 defaming all of these people, if that's what the allegation is.
20 So I think it's problematic to say this is the pleading that is
21 the allegation, because what happens is, this pleading gets
22 filed --
23 THE COURT: But this is an allegation of hers.
24 MR. PAGLIUCA: Of who?
25 THE COURT: Of the plaintiff's.
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1 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, filed on her behalf by her
2 lawyers.
3 THE COURT: Come on. It's hers. It's her allegation.
4 MR. PAGLIUCA: And she is Jane Doe 102 and it is filed
5 by her lawyers, and that's what they are saying on her behalf.
6 That's what I can say about that, your Honor.
7 THE COURT: I do understand how these documents are
8 prepared.
9 MR. PAGLIUCA: I know you do.
10 THE COURT: This much I got. I've got that. But it's
11 her statement. Come on.
12 Similarly, Ms. Maxwell's statement is her statement,
13 regardless of how it was prepared. So I know the motive issue
14 and all that. Now whether it should be in some form, but your
15 client does not say, "The allegations with respect to me are
16 false."
17 MR. PAGLIUCA: Well, I disagree with that, your Honor.
18 I mean, I believe --
19 THE COURT: They're all false.
20 MR. PAGLIUCA: But I believe a fair reading of that
21 document, the press release by Barden and Gow, is that she's
22 talking about the allegations against her, Maxwell, and she
23 includes Dershowitz, and that's essentially it. I mean, she's
24 not parsing through the 102 pleading and saying, you know, this
25 is wrong and that is wrong. And the fundamental reason for it
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1 is, she's never read the document prior to Barden and Gow
2 issuing the statement, and what she is reacting to are people
3 calling her and saying, you know --
4 THE COURT: Well, whatever she knew. Well, okay. All
5 right.
6 MR. PAGLIUCA: That's it.
7 THE COURT: I guess we're as far as we can go on that.
8 MR. PAGLIUCA: It is whatever she knew. But what is
9 in the document is way broader, much broader, than her base of
10 knowledge, or Barden's or Gow's, at the time this press release
11 issued. So I think that's point number one.
12 Point number two is, they apparently want to introduce
13 a lot more information from the Jane Doe 102 CVRA litigation
14 than this simple document, and we can address those as we go
15 along. If the Court were to deem portions of this relating to
16 Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Dershowitz relevant to this matter, we had
17 proposed, as part of our pleadings, a redacted version of this,
18 which is also to your point just now, your Honor.
19 And my colleague points me directly to the statement,
20 your Honor -- the first line, second sentence. "The
21 allegations made by," and then it says Victoria Roberts, which
22 is inaccurate by the drafter, "against Ghislaine Maxwell are
23 untrue." And then it follows. But that is the backdrop to
24 this. And she's responding to things about herself, not about
25 anybody else that are contained in this pleading.
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1 MR. CASSELL: And we have a point of agreement here,
2 your Honor, now. We agree with the last point. The
3 allegations that Ms. Giuffre made against Maxwell are what's at
4 issue in this case, not allegations against, you know, third --
5 Maxwell and of c
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gov.uscourts.nysd.447706.849.0
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giuffre-maxwell
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