Unsealed lawsuits offer new details about old sex abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein
NEW YORK — Amid much hype, a court late Wednesday began releasing a new set of previously secret court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-set financier who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Social media has been full of posts in recent weeks speculating that the documents contain a list of wealthy and powerful men who were Epstein's “clients” or “co-conspirators.”
Such a list did not exist. The initial collection of about forty documents made public largely contained material that had previously been declassified, or exhaustively covered, in nearly two decades of newspaper stories, TV documentaries, interviews and books about the Epstein scandal.
Yet the documents – which include transcripts of interviews with some of Epstein's victims – contain reminders that Epstein surrounded himself with famous and powerful figures, including some who have also been accused of misconduct.
They include mentions of Epstein's former friendship with Bill Clinton – who is not accused of any wrongdoing – and of Britain's Prince Andrew, who previously settled a lawsuit accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl who traveled with Epstein.
The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of dozens of women who have sued Epstein for abusing them at his homes in Florida, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and New Mexico. This particular lawsuit targeted Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit Epstein's victims and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Epstein, a millionaire known for his dealings with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and academic stars, committed suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Giuffre's lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the court had blacked out or sealed a number of court documents over concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein's victims and other people whose names had emerged during the legal battle.
Only about 40 of those documents were made public Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days.
The documents include the statements of several of Epstein's victims, many of whom have previously told their stories publicly.
Giuffre said that the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein — a job that required sexual acts are performed.
She settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022 alleging he sexually assaulted her during a trip to London. That same year, Giuffre withdrew an accusation she made against Epstein's former attorney, law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she “may have made a mistake” in identifying him as an abuser.
The documents released Wednesday contain 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 committed suicide in a Paris prison in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
Clinton's name came up as Guiffre was questioned by Maxwell's lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein, including a story that quoted her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Donald Trump. Giuffre said none of these things actually happened.
The judge said a handful of names in the documents should be left black because they would identify people who were sexually assaulted. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they decide to tell their story publicly, as Giuffre has done.
Even before the documents were released, there was an abundance of misinformation about what they contained. Social media users falsely claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's name could appear in the documents, spurred by star New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers Tuesday on ESPN's “The Pat McAfee Show.”
Kimmel said in a response to X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers' “reckless words put my family in danger.”
“Keep up the good work and we will discuss the facts further in court,” Kimmel wrote.
The judge did not set a target for when all the documents should be made public, but more documents are expected to emerge in the coming days.
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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Larry Neumeister contributed.