Jeffrey Epstein list: New documents reveal paedophile’s responses to sex trafficking claims
Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Richardson and other high profile figures have been named in the filings from a lawsuit between Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell
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Over the past week thousands of pages of court documents relating to late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, have been made public after US judge Loretta Preska ordered the release of filings in a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell.
The documents named scores of prominent figures including, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner. Being identified through the court documents does not mean that the individual was involved in or aware of any wrongdoing by Epstein.
The final batch of documents, released on Tuesday, included depositions from Ms Giuffre, Maxwell and Epstein.
In Epstein’s deposition, he was questioned about his campaign of abuse of young and underage girls. He pleaded the Fifth over 1,000 times.
In Maxwell’s deposition, she was confronted with disturbing messages left for Epstein – one of which referenced what appeared to be code for procuring an underage Russian girl for Epstein. “She is two times eight years old. Not blond. Lessons are free and you can have your first today if you call,” it read.
Watch: Comedian Jim Gaffigan makes daring Jeffrey Epstein reference at Golden Globes 2024
How did lawyer Alan Dershowitz responded to the Epstein files
Alan Dershowitz was mentioned in many of the released documents. A Jane Doe claimed that Epstein instructed her to have sex with Dershowitz, which the former Harvard Law Professor has vehemently denied.
“Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions while she was a minor, not only in Florida but also on private planes, in New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” an excerpt of the filings by the plaintiff’s attorneys read.
Following accusations by Ms Giuffre that she had been trafficked to have sex with Mr Dershowitz, contentious legal battles between the pair rumbled on for the next three years. In November 2022, Ms Giuffre admitted that she may have made a mistake in identifying Mr Dershowitz as one of her abusers. Lawsuits were then dismissed on both sides.
Mr Dershowitz previously denied allegations in 2015 that he had sex with an underage girl. In a response just hours after the first tranche of filings were unsealed last week, Mr Dershowitz again denied those allegations.
“Of course I’m on that list, I was his lawyer. I flew on his plane,” Mr Dershowitz said during a YouTube livestream that he titled “The Epstein list and guilt by association.” “I had an innocent relationship with a man who I didn’t know, nobody suspected, had done anything wrong.”
Mr Dershowitz glossed over his role in helping secure Epstein’s 2008 secret “sweetheart” plea deal on charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting prostitution, which landed Epstein in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade for just 13 months. Three months into his sentence, Epstein was allowed to leave the jail through a “work-release program.”
Key takeaways from the new Epstein documents
More than two hundred previously sealed court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and registered sex offender, have now been made public. Multiple tranches were released over the past week.
US judge Loretta Preska ordered that the court filings in a lawsuit brought against Ghislaine Maxwell by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre must finally be unsealed and the names of up to 200 “John and Jane Does” unredacted.
She mentioned that many did not oppose the release of the documents. Judge Preska did instruct that certain names be kept redacted to protect the identities of sexual abuse victims.
Read more:
Key takeaways from the new Epstein documents
More documents are expected to be unsealed in the coming weeks
Photos of Ghislaine Maxwell, young girls on Epstein ‘Island of Sin’ released in filings
Jeffrey Epstein’s island: What really happened there?
A criminal complaint from the attorney general of the US Virgin Islands described it as “the perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault”.
On this island, the complaint said: “Epstein and his associates could avoid detection of their illegal activity from Virgin Islands and federal law enforcement, and prevent these young women and underage girls from leaving freely and escaping the abuse.”
The Independent’s Io Dodds reports:
Jeffrey Epstein island: What really happened there?
Accusers say billionaire’s private paradise of Little St James in US Virgin Islands was centre of international sex trafficking ring
WATCH: Epstein spurned Trump because he thought he was ‘crook’, brother claims
Who’s on the Epstein list?
Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton are among the more than 100 people named in the newly-published legal documents linked to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Being named in these documents does not indicate any wrongdoing related to Epstein or anyone else.
The list includes many of Epstein’s accusers and alleged victims, as well as people with only tangential connections to Epstein who were pulled into the lawsuit against Maxwell.
Prince Andrew appears prominently, with the documents mentioning a previously reported accusation that he groped Johanna Sjoberg (which he denies). Former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are also named, with neither accused of wrongdoing.
Judges, court staff and legal represenatives are not included.
Here’s the list of names in full:
The Epstein List: Full list of names revealed in unsealed court records so far
Prince Andrew, David Copperfield and Bill Clinton are among the names included in court documents published
What were the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell?
Jeffrey Epstein, a millionaire money manager, surrounded himself with celebrities, leading academics and big names from the fashion and political worlds before he was arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2006 and accused of paying underage girls for sex.
He served 13 months in a jail work release program. Outrage over his plea bargain, sparked by reporting in the Miami Herald, led federal prosecutors in New York to bring new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, and he killed himself in a federal jail cell while awaiting trial.
Prosecutors also brought charges against Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison term for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
Dozens of women say Epstein sexually abused them at his homes in New York, Florida, the Virgin Islands and New Mexico.
The documents released this month relate to a 2015 defamation lawsuit that Virginia Giuffre filed against Maxwell and was settled in 2017. Most of the court files have been public for years, but public interest in the documents soared after a judge ordered that some sealed sections be fully released.
Much of the lawsuit revolved around the truthfulness of Ms Giuffre’s claims that Epstein had flown her around the world for sexual encounters with billionaires, politicians, royals and heads of state.
She initially kept the names of those men secret, but in a 2014 legal filing, she said her abusers included Prince Andrew, other royal figures whose names she didn’t know, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, the head of a hotel chain, noted academics, former US senator George Mitchell, French modeling scout Jean Luc Brunel, billionaire Glenn Dubin and law professor Alan Dershowitz, who had represented Epstein.
All of the men named by Ms Giuffre denied her allegations.
Ms Giuffre withdrew her claims about Mr Dershowitz in 2022, saying she “may have made a mistake” in identifying him as an abuser. She said she “was very young at the time” and “it was a very stressful and traumatic environment.” Mr Dershowitz campaigned to get documents related to Ms Giuffre’s lawsuit unsealed, arguing that they would make his innocence more clear.
Ms Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022.
Brunel, who was close to Epstein, killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls.
Aaron Rodgers refuses to apologise over feud with Jimmy Kimmel
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers denied he implied comic Jimmy Kimmel was a paedophile and condemned those who do, but stopped short of apologising for his role in escalating their burgeoning feud.
Rodgers appeared on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday for his weekly appearance and addressed comments he made the week before that appeared to suggest Kimmel’s name might appear on a list of associates of Jeffrey Epstein, a millionaire accused of sex trafficking involving underage victims before he died by suicide.
“Any type of name calling is ridiculous and I’m not calling him (a paedophile), and neither should you,” Rodgers said on the show on Tuesday.
The feud between ABC’s late-night star and Rodgers, who regularly appears on the daily ESPN show, has proven embarrassing for The Walt Disney Co, the parent company to both television networks.
Rodgers criticised Mike Foss, an ESPN executive who oversees McAfee’s show, for saying that Rodgers had made “a dumb and factually inaccurate joke” about Kimmel.
“Mike, you’re not helping,” Rodgers said. “You’re not helping because I just read earlier exactly what I said. This is the game plan of the media and this is what they do: They try to cancel, you know, and it’s not just me.”
Rodgers last week said a lot of people, “including Jimmy Kimmel,” are really hoping that a list of Epstein’s associates doesn’t come out publicly. Kimmel, who has denied any association with Epstein, threatened Rodgers with a lawsuit for the comment and said the NFL star was putting his family in danger.
Rodgers suggested that people were reading too much into what he said, and that he was not stupid enough to accuse Kimmel of being a paedophile.
WATCH: Jimmy Kimmel delivers seven-minute roast of Aaron Rodgers over Epstein list row
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