The release of court documents naming associates of Jeffrey Epstein caused a website hosting them to crash within minutes.
The CourtListener site, run by the non-profit Free Law Project, initially showed the 40 documents made public in the case by Judge Loretta Preska in New York.
But the site soon went down with the message “This usually happens when we are doing maintenance or our server is overloaded.”
The documents were still available on the PACER system, which gives public access to federal court records.
The legal files are part of a long-running defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against his former fixer and convicted child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in 2015.
Although the case was settled in 2017, Maxwell’s attorneys had fought for the names to continue to remain private. Their objection was lifted in 2022, a year after she was convicted and sentenced to two decades in prison.
In December, New York Judge Loretta Preska issued an order to unseal materials connected to the case.
Ms Giuffre first brought the civil case against Maxwell in 2015 after a spokesperson for the former socialite called Ms Giuffre’s allegations “obvious lies”.
The civil case helped consolidate the criminal case against Maxwell, who was later sentenced to 20 years in prison on five charges of sex trafficking minor girls. She has since appealed her conviction.
Ms Giuffre also went on to sue Prince Andrew for sexual assault and infliction of emotional distress before that case was also settled in 2022. Prince Andrew has adamantly denied the sexual abuse allegations.
However, hundreds of names included in the Giuffre v Maxwell lawsuit remained under seal. The Miami Herald, whose investigation into Epstein led to his arrest in 2019, first sued in 2018 for the release of all documents related to the lawsuit.
