The release of previously sealed court documents from a case involving Jeffrey Epstein might dissatisfy online operatives who expected explosive new information.
The approximately 60 documents released as of Thursday largely cite figures whose names were already known, including high-profile mates of Epstein’s and victims who have spoken publicly.
The judge who made the call the prior month to release the information said she was doing so largely because much of it is already public.
The intent to release the documents had initiated rumors that they included a list of “clients” or “co-conspirators,” and misinformation about their contents is continuing to run rife on social media.
Still, the records do include some new details about the financier’s sexual abuse of teenage girls, and deliver a reminder of how he leveraged his strong connections to recruit his victims and help cover up his offenses.
The documents unsealed this week are the latest of thousands previously made public in cases involving Epstein. About 250 more are expected to be released in the future.
Who is Jeffrey Epstein?
Jeffrey, known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires, and stars, Epstein became the major subject of a police probe in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.
He was arrested in 2006.
More than a dozen underage girls described similar sexual abuse, but prosecutors eventually let the financier plead guilty in 2008 to a charge involving a single victim. He served almost 13 months in a jail work-release program.
Some notable acquaintances left Epstein after his conviction, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but many did not. Epstein continued to meet with the rich and well-known for another decade, usually through philanthropic work.
Reporting by the Miami Herald revived interest in the scandal, and federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking. He killed himself in prison while awaiting trial.
The US attorney in Manhattan then prosecuted Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell for helping recruit his underage victims. She was sentenced in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison term.
What are these secret documents about?
The records being unsealed are part of a 2015 case filed against Maxwell by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of the women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands, and New Mexico.
Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was drawn away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein – a job that involved performing sexual acts.
Giuffre also asserted she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social circle, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former US Sen. George Mitchell, and the billionaire Glenn Dubin, among others. All of those men said her statements were falsified.
Giuffre settled a case against Prince Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre drew an accusation she had made against Epstein’s former attorney, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she “may have made a mistake” in recognizing him as an abuser.
Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the Miami Herald went to court to access court papers originally filed under seal, including transcripts of interviews the lawyers did with probable witnesses.
Approximately 2,000 pages were unsealed by a court in 2019. Other documents were unsealed in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
The bunch currently being unsealed holds around 250 records with sections that were blacked out or were packed entirely because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the lawful battle but weren’t complicit in his offenses.
Nearly 60 have been released as of Thursday. More will be expected released in the coming days.
What do the documents reveal?
US District Judge Loretta A. Preska, who considered the documents to determine what should be unsealed, said in her December order that she was calling the records released because much of the information within them is already public.
While some records have been unsealed, either in part or in full, in other court cases.
The persons named in the records include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his staff who told their accounts to tabloid newspapers, people who served as spectators at Maxwell’s trial, people who were cited in passing during depositions but aren’t accused of anything salacious, and people who probed Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist, and a police detective.
There are also prominent names of public figures known to have linked with Epstein over the years, but whose connections with him have already been well documented elsewhere, the judge said.
One of them is Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on accusations that he raped underage girls when he killed himself in a Paris prison in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
His name was peppered throughout the documents released on Wednesday.
Clinton and Trump both aspect in the court file, partly because Giuffre was probed by Maxwell’s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein. One account cited her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and had an affair with Trump. Giuffre said neither of those things occurred. She hasn’t accused either former president of misconduct.
The judge said a bunch of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would recognize people who were sexually abused. The Associated Press does not generally identify people who say they are sufferers of sexual assault unless they determine to tell their accounts publicly, as Giuffre has done.
The judge hasn’t set a target for when all of the documents should be released, but more documents could come in the next few days.
