The release of hundreds of documents tied to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to produce any bombshells but did offer fresh insight into the financier’s lifestyle.
Court documents identifying associates of Epstein were made public in federal court in New York on Wednesday after a years-long battle over their release.
The first of what are expected to be hundreds of documents identifying more than 150 individuals were unsealed after an order last month by a US district judge. The documents were filed in redacted form as part of a 2015 lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of participating in Epstein’s sex crimes.
The first documents included emails, transcripts of depositions and legal filings. The names of two former presidents, a member of the UK royal family and celebrities were among the unredacted information.
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Epstein was arrested on July 6th, 2019, for sex trafficking. He was found dead in his jail cell on August 10th of that year; authorities determined that he hanged himself.
Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years imprisonment. She has maintained her innocence and is appealing her conviction.
Here is what we learned from the 40 unsealed documents so far:
David Copperfield, Michael Jackson
- Johanna Sjoberg, an Epstein victim who regularly gave him massages at his Palm Beach home, recounted meeting magician David Copperfield, pop star Michael Jackson and Prince Andrew.
- She said she met Jackson at Epstein’s Florida home but didn’t give him a massage.
- Sjoberg met Copperfield at a dinner at Epstein’s house and recalled him performing “some magic tricks”.
- “He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” she said, referring to Copperfield, during a 2016 deposition. She didn’t accuse him of criminal conduct.
- Copperfield couldn’t be reached for comment. Jackson died in 2009.
Prince Andrew
- Sjoberg also claimed Britain’s Prince Andrew put his hand on her breast when they posed for a photograph with a puppet of him at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. “And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast and so Andrew put his on mine,” she said.
- Prince Andrew couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday. He reached a civil settlement with Giuffre in 2022.
Bill Clinton, Donald Trump
- Former US president Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein have been the source of much speculation since photographs and records emerged of Clinton travelling on the late money manager’s private jet. The unsealed documents provide a little more context as to how the former president’s name became wrapped up in the litigation.
- Giuffre told a journalist that she had dinner with Clinton at Epstein’s villa in the US Virgin Islands but did not allege he did anything untoward. In Giuffre’s unpublished deposition transcript, mentioned in the unsealed documents, she referred to Clinton “teasing the girls on either side of him with playful pokes and brassy comments”.
- Giuffre’s lawyers sought to depose Clinton, but Maxwell’s attorneys said the dinner party was a “concocted story” that had been debunked by a former FBI director who reviewed Clinton’s movements in January 2003.
- Sjoberg also claimed in her deposition that Epstein told her “Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” according to one unsealed document.
- Epstein went to great lengths to draw powerful and influential people into his orbit, many of whom say they now regret ever being associated with him. Sjoberg said she was on Epstein’s private plane once when it had to land in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Epstein remarked “great, we’ll call up Trump” and go to the casino, referring to Donald Trump.
- Sjoberg recalled Epstein “name-dropping” often.
- A spokesperson for Clinton referred to his 2019 statement, claiming he had never been to been to Epstein’s Virgin Islands complex, and knew nothing of Epstein’s terrible crimes. He did take four trips on Epstein’s private plane to Europe, Asia and Africa.
- Trump didn’t respond to the latest documents, but has previously said that he had a “falling out” with Epstein and wasn’t “a fan”.
Glenn Dubin
- Hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and his wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin, have long been identified as Epstein’s friends but denied any knowledge of his crimes.
- Giuffre claimed in her deposition that Maxwell sent her to give Dubin a massage one day in Palm Beach and asked her to have sex with him.
- According to an unsealed portion of Maxwell’s deposition, she denied this. “Just for the record, I have never at any time, at anyplace, in any moment ever asked Virginia Roberts or whatever she is called now to have sex with anybody,” Maxwell said.
- Sjoberg testified that she gave the Dubins massages once at their apartment on Breakers Row in Palm Beach “but there was nothing sexual.”
- A spokesperson for the Dubins said on Thursday: “The Dubins strongly deny these allegations, as we first said in 2019, when these unsubstantiated statements first surfaced as part of this same civil court proceeding.”
- Andersson-Dubin, who was also an ex-girlfriend of Epstein’s, testified as a character witness at Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial, telling the jury she was comfortable with her own children’s relationship with the financier, and called him “Uncle F.”
Ghislaine Maxwell
- Giuffre’s suit accused Maxwell of recruiting her at the age of 16 to be sexually abused by Epstein. After Maxwell called her a liar, Giuffre sued her for defamation in 2015. The unsealed documents were filed during that case, which settled in 2017.
- In 2021, Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking conspiracy and is serving 20 years in prison.
- The material showed how Epstein wanted to offer a reward to any of Giuffre’s friends or family who could “prove her allegations are false.” “The strongest is the Clinton dinner,” he wrote in an email to “Gmax” in 2015, which also mentioned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking participating in an “orgy”.
- Epstein also suggested Maxwell issue a lengthy public statement to distance herself from him after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida in 2008. She never issued the statement.
- Maxwell denied knowledge of Epstein’s efforts to discredit Giuffre.
- Hawking, who suffered from major physical disabilities due to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, died in 2018.
- Maxwell’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, said his client took no position on the decision to unseal the documents and was focused on her appeal. “She has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence,” he said. – Bloomberg