The names of acquaintances and associates of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were released on Wednesday in a set of previously sealed court documents and amid a flurry of public speculation.
The 40 documents are the first in more than 200 that are expected to be unsealed over the next few days as part of the defamation lawsuit filed by sexual abuse victim-survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accused British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell of enabling her abuse by Epstein.
More than 100 people connected to Jeffrey Epstein were named in the documents, following a federal judge’s December ruling that the information be unsealed to the public.
Much of the information revealed had already been released in other court cases, and some high profile contacts–including former US Presidents and British royalty– have been covered extensively in the media.
While the names mentioned are not accused of any wrongdoing, there’s a 2016 deposition from Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s victims, that mentions politicians and figureheads in the US and abroad.
The release of these documents have confirmed the scale of both Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring and his powerful social networks.
Who is Jeffrey Epstein?
A wealthy financier from New York, Epstein is known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and big-name academics. He was arrested in 2006 after being accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex in 2005.
During a police investigation into the incident in Palm Beach, Florida, dozens of other underage girls described similar sexual abuse from Epstein. Prosecutors, however, allowed him to plead guilty in 2008 to a charge involving a single victim.
He served 13 months in a jail work -release program before another decade of mingling with rich and famous acquaintances. In 2019, Epstein was charged with sex trafficking following renewed interest in the scandal, which was ignited by reporting from the Miami Herald.
While awaiting trial, Epstein killed himself in jail after reported failures from facility staff.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the failures were deeply troubling as they “led to questions about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death and effectively deprived Epstein’s numerous victims of the opportunity to seek justice”.
What are the unsealed documents about?
The unsealed documents are part of a 2015 lawsuit filed against Ghislaine Maxwell, a wealthy British socialite sentenced to 20 years in prison for recruiting young girls for Epstein to sexually exploit.
One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, filed the lawsuit against Maxwell, saying the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from her job as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein.
Giuffre says the pair groomed her to perform sexual acts during the job, and that she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social circle, such as Britain’s Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former US Senator George Mitchell and billionaire Glenn Dubin, amongst others. All of the men have denied Giuffre’s accounts.
Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022, after Andrew paid her an undisclosed sum of money. Her lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017.
The Miami Herald went to court to access sealed court papers, resulting in some documents being released from 2019 to 2022. The batch currently being released contains around 250 records with sections that were wholly or partially sealed for concerns of privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people’s names who appeared but weren’t complicit in his crimes.
Around 40 of the documents were made public Wednesday, with more expected in the coming days.
Which high-profile names were shown?
Already associated with Epstein previously, former US president Bill Clinton’s name was mentioned in Sjoberg’s testimony that Epstein had told her “Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”. She also said Epstein had “dealings” with Clinton.
Michael Jackson was another name mentioned when Sjoberg said she’d met the late musician at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. When asked if she had massaged (a euphemism for sexual services, according to many of the victims) Jackson, Sjoberg said “I did not”.
Sjoberg also said she met famed magician David Copperfield at Epstein’s mansion and that he’d questioned her if she “was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls”. She said Copperfield didn’t specify if the “girls” were “teenagers or anything along those line” when asked during the deposition.
Donald Trump’s association with Epstein has been widely reported as well, and in Sjoberg’s deposition, she said Epstein had taken her to one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City when a storm prevented his plane from landing in New York. Sjoberg said she didn’t gave Trump a massage.
In the case of Prince Andrew’s association with Epstein, Sjoberg’s account said she met him at Epstein’s New York home, where she said she sat on Andrew’s lap and he’d put his hands on her breast.
Guiffre said in her deposition that she was sent by Maxwell to have sex with French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was suspected of scouting girls for Epstein and killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022.
Other names mentioned in the documents included Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s former assistant, who victims said helped schedule his “massages”, the billionaire founder of L Brands Leslie Wexner, hedge fund manager and billionaire Glenn Dubin, the former governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, Epstein’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz and computer scientist and former MIT professor Marvin Minsky.
Social media misinformation
Misinformation over the newly released documents has been rife on social media as well, with rumours of new “co-conspirators” and fake AI images appearing of people with Epstein.
Ahead of the documents’ release, social media users wrongly claimed late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear. This came about after New York Jets’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers made a joke about Kimmel’s name being on the list. Kimmel has threatened to sue Rodgers.
Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Campbell, Kevin Spacey and Bruce Willis were among the names of people claiming were in Jeffrey Epstein’s associated list. While their names were mentioned in the defamation lawsuit against Maxwell, this was only when Sjoberg was asked if she met the following celebrities. Sjoberg said she hadn’t met them.