Amid great hype, a court began to release a new batch of previously secret court documents late Wednesday related to Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Social media has been rife in recent weeks with posts speculating the documents would include a list of rich and powerful men who were Epstein\u2019s \u201cclients\u201d or \u201cco-conspirators.\u201d There was no such list. The initial collection of around 40 documents made public largely contained material that had been released previously, or exhaustively had been covered in nearly two decades\u2019 worth of newspaper stories, TV documentaries, interviews and books about the Epstein scandal.<\/p>\n
Still, the records \u2013 which included transcripts of interviews with some of Epstein\u2019s victims \u2013 contained reminders that Epstein surrounded himself with famous and powerful figures, including a few who have also been accused of misconduct. There were mentions of Epstein\u2019s past friendship with Bill Clinton \u2013 who is not accused of any wrongdoing \u2013 and of Britain\u2019s Prince Andrew, who previously settled a lawsuit accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl who travelled with Epstein. Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg testified in a newly released deposition that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein\u2019s Palm Beach, Florida, home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.<\/p>\n
The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein\u2019s victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and New Mexico. This particular suit was against Epstein\u2019s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit Epstein\u2019s victims and is serving a 20-year prison term. Epstein, a millionaire known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and academic stars, killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on a sex-trafficking charge.<\/p>\n
Giuffre\u2019s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the court had kept some court documents blacked-out or sealed because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein\u2019s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle. Only around 40 of those documents were made public Wednesday. More will be released in coming days. Among records released Wednesday were court memos in which lawyers for Giuffre complained that some of the women who had worked for Epstein were proving difficult to serve with subpoenas, as was Epstein himself. Two women had invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned in other lawsuits about whether they had been involved in procuring young women for Epstein to abuse.<\/p>\n
Maxwell, in her deposition, chaffed at being asked questions about whether she had ever arranged for Giuffre or other women to have sexual encounters with Prince Andrew, or purchased sex toys or revealing outfits, or seen young, topless women at Epstein\u2019s home. One person who had been on Epstein\u2019s domestic staff said in a deposition that he felt uncomfortable with the number of young women showing up at the house, and felt threatened by Maxwell to stay quiet after he left his job. Other documents included legal arguments over whether Giuffre should be allowed more time to depose potential witnesses, including Clinton. Giuffre never alleged he was involved in illegal behavior, but her attorneys said the former president was a \u201ckey person who can provide information about his close relationship\u201d with Maxwell and Epstein.<\/p>\n
Maxwell\u2019s attorneys countered that Clinton testimony was not relevant and that Giuffre\u2019s attorneys didn\u2019t diligently try to subpoena him to testify. The records included the depositions of several of Epstein\u2019s victims, many of whom have told their stories publicly previously. Besides the mention of Michael Jackson, Sjoberg\u2019s May 2016 deposition also shed new light on an April 2001 trip to New York in which she said Prince Andrew touched her breast while they posed for a photo at Epstein\u2019s Manhattan town house. In the testimony, some of which appeared as excerpts in previous court filings, Sjoberg said she and Giuffre had flown with Epstein to New York on his private jet. Maxwell and Prince Andrew met them there, she said.<\/p>\n
At one point, she testified, Maxwell called her to an upstairs closet where they pulled out a puppet of Prince Andrew that had been made for a BBC program. \u201cIt looked like him,\u201d Sjoberg said. \u201cAnd she brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC.\u201d \u201cAnd they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch. They put the puppet on Virginia\u2019s lap, and I sat on Andrew\u2019s lap, and they put the puppet\u2019s hand on Virginia\u2019s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.\u201d On the way to New York, Sjoberg testified, Epstein\u2019s jet diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and spent a few hours at one of Donald Trump\u2019s casinos, because of bad weather.<\/p>\n
Upon hearing the change of plans, Sjoberg recalled Epstein saying, \u201cGreat, we\u2019ll call up Trump and we\u2019ll go to\u201d the casino. Sjoberg wasn\u2019t asked if they\u2019d met up with Trump that night. Later in her testimony, she said she was never asked to give Trump a massage. Sjoberg also testified that though she never met Clinton, Epstein once remarked to her that \u201cClinton likes them young,\u201d a remark she took as a reference to young women or girls. In her deposition, Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago club to become a \u201cmasseuse\u201d for Epstein \u2013 a job that involved performing sexual acts. She settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022 in which she claimed he had sexually abused her during a trip to London. That same year, Giuffre withdrew an accusation she had made against Epstein\u2019s former attorney, law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she \u201cmay have made a mistake\u201d in identifying him as an abuser.<\/p>\n
The records released Wednesday included many references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls when he killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse. Clinton\u2019s name also came up because Guiffre was questioned by Maxwell\u2019s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper reports about her time with Epstein, including a story quoting her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Trump. Giuffre said neither of those things actually happened. The judge said a handful of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who were sexually abused. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Giuffre has done.<\/p>\n
Even before the documents were released, misinformation about what was in them abounded. Social media users wrongly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s name might appear in the documents, spurred by a crack New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made Tuesday on ESPN\u2019s \u201cThe Pat McAfee Show.\u201d Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers\u2019 \u201creckless words put my family in danger.\u201d \u201cKeep it up and we will debate the facts further in court,\u201d Kimmel wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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