About 950 pages of court documents identifying associates of financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday.
What is the Jeffrey Epstein list?
Included in the unsealed papers are the names of about 150 Epstein associates. The documents were filed as part of Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator in his sexual abuse scheme. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
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Initial tranche of nearly 950 Epstein court documents released
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Giuffre is one of the women who sued Epstein for abusing them at his homes in Florida, New York, the United States Virgin Islands and New Mexico. She said she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit.
Other documents were unsealed by the court from 2019 to 2022.
Last month, a judge listed in a 50-page document about 180 people – under pseudonyms – ordering that their identities be made public within 14 days of the order. Some individuals have objected to the disclosure of their identities in the case.
The inclusion of a name on the list does not indicate there are any allegations against the individual.
Here is a closer look at some of the names in the recent documents:
Prince Andrew
The documents unsealed on Wednesday have revealed sexual assault allegations against the British royal.
Johanna Sjoberg, who is one of the many women who have accused Epstein of sexual abuse, said Andrew put his hand on her breast in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2001.
This was while he was taking a photo with Sjoberg and Giuffre. Maxwell and Epstein were present while this photo was taken. Sjoberg said the photo also included a puppet that said “Prince Andrew” on it.
The incident, which has been previously reported by other media outlets and which Andrew has denied, was in an initial trove of previously redacted documents that otherwise revealed few new details about the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking activities.
Sjoberg was recruited to work for Epstein by Maxwell, who had been his girlfriend in the early 1990s before they became professional collaborators and accomplices in sex crimes for almost three decades.
While Sjoberg was hired as an assistant when she was a 20-year-old college student, she was quickly turned into a massage therapist and was sexually coerced while she worked for Maxwell and Epstein from 2001 to 2006.
Giuffre, now 38, accused Andrew of sexually abusing her two decades ago when she was 17, an allegation the prince called baseless. The case was settled in 2022.
According to the documents, Sjoberg said she witnessed Giuffre, then 17, in Epstein’s New York mansion with Andrew, Epstein and Maxwell. She also said she believes what Giuffre has said about Andrew and Epstein sexually abusing her.
Alan Dershowitz
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is well-known for his work in US criminal law. The documents pertaining to him include allegations made by an unnamed woman, Jane Doe #3.
Jane Doe #3 said Epstein “required” her to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on multiple occasions when she was a minor.
Dershowitz also played a significant role in negotiating an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only for Epstein but also for “any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”, the documents say.
Epstein’s housekeeper Juan Alessi testified that Dershowitz would often visit Epstein’s Florida mansion to get massages.
Another one of Epstein’s household employees, Alfredo Rodriquez, said the lawyer would be present at Epstein’s residence without his family and in the presence of girls.
Dershowitz said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday that Jane Doe #3 misidentified him, and he denied ever meeting her. He suggested he was the victim of the MeToo movement’s “hypocrisy”, accusing “radical feminists” of focusing on Epstein and his associates while not “condemning Hamas”, the Palestinian armed group.
Jean-Luc Brunel
Jean-Luc Brunel was a French model scout who was awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls when he died by suicide in a Paris jail in 2022.
Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse. She said Maxwell sent her to many places to have sex with Brunel. The documents also say Brunel would exploit underage girls from disadvantaged backgrounds by offering them modelling jobs but would then bring them to the US and “farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein”.
According to the documents, Jane Doe #3 accused Epstein of trafficking her to Brunel, who was Epstein’s close travel companion. She said she was also forced to watch Brunel, Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulting underage girls.
Rolling Stone magazine published a report on Tuesday about a recent Los Angeles lawsuit in which a new woman accused Brunel of holding her hostage at a Canadian estate so she could be sexually abused by multiple men when she was 18.
David Copperfield
Sjoberg testified to meeting American magician David Copperfield at one of Epstein’s houses. She added that she observed him to be a friend of Epstein’s. She also recalled a girl at that dinner who she thought looked like she was of high-school age.
Sjoberg said Copperfield asked her if she knew that “girls were getting paid to find other girls”, referring to the recruitment of women by Epstein and Maxwell as “massage therapists”.
Bill Clinton
Former US President Bill Clinton is also mentioned in the court documents.
While Sjoberg said she did not meet Clinton, she testified that Epstein said to her: “Clinton likes them young,” apparently referring to girls. While Giuffre had mentioned earlier that Clinton and Epstein had a close relationship, she did not accuse him of any illegal action.
Clinton has repeatedly rejected all allegations that he was involved in anything unlawful and has said he had no interactions with Epstein for several years prior to the financier’s arrest.
Donald Trump
Former President Donald Trump is also mentioned in the documents but not accused.
Sjoberg mentioned an incident when she left with Epstein, Giuffre and a few others on a plane from Palm Beach, Florida, in 2001.
When the plane was unable to land in New York due to a storm, they had to land in Atlantic City and went to one of Trump’s casinos. Since Giuffre was underage at the time, Sjoberg was asked if she was allowed into the casino.
“I did not know anything about how old you had to be to gamble legally. I just knew she could not get in because of an ID issue, so she and I did not gamble,” Sjoberg answered.
Stephen Hawking
The late physicist’s name was mentioned in an email sent by Epstein to Maxwell in January 2015. In this email, Epstein told Maxwell to “issue a reward” to any of Giuffre’s friends, family and acquaintances to come forward and disprove Giuffre’s allegations, including against Hawking.
“the strongest is the clinton dinner, and the new version in the virgin isalnds that stven hawking partica-ted in an underage orgy,” the email said.
Michael Jackson
Sjoberg said she saw the late singer at Epstein’s residence. When she was asked if she gave him a massage, she said no.
More names to come
Not all the documents have been unsealed. The judge hasn’t set a target for when all of the documents should be made public, but more documents are expected to come out in the next few days. Lawyers for one individual, Doe 107, wrote to the judge, arguing they could face victimisation in their home country and requested time to submit grounds for their name to remain sealed.
