Numerous court documents identifying associates of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday.
Some of the high-profile names in the court documents include Britain’s Prince Andrew, the former US president Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson and David Copperfield.
These associates’ just-unsealed names were contained in court documents filed as part of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell; the documents include excerpts of depositions and motions in this case. The British socialite was convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking and similar charges for procuring teen girls for disgraced financier Epstein.
Prior to the unsealing, the names were listed in court papers as variants of J Doe. Many of the names are people who had been publicly identified as Epstein associates prior to this unsealing.
The inclusion of a name in this list does not mean that said associate has been accused of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Among the names are people mentioned in passing at legal proceedings.
In a deposition, Maxwell appears to say that Prince Andrew visited Epstein’s Island in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein has been accused of abusing numerous girls on this island.
She responded in the affirmative and, when asked how many times, she said: “I can only remember once.” When asked if there were any girls on the island at that time, Maxwell insisted: “There were no girls on the island at all. No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.”
One document included a deposition given by Johanna Sjoberg, whom Maxwell allegedly procured for the purpose of performing sex acts on Epstein.
Ms Sjoberg said in her deposition that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”.
In 2019, Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña denied claims made about Mr Clinton’s involvement with Epstein and wrote in a statement on Twitter that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
Mr Clinton notably had an 18-month long affair with Monica Lewinsky, his then 22-year-old intern, during his first term as president. He was 49 years old.
Ms Sjoberg also said that the late musician Michael Jackson was at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, and that she met the famed magician David Copperfield.
“Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey? she was asked. “I met Michael Jackson ... at [Epstein’s] house in Palm Beach.”
Asked whether she massaged Jackson, Ms Sjoberg said: “I did not.”
As for Mr Copperfield, Ms Sjoberg said that he attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and “he did some magic tricks”.
“Did you observe David Copperfield to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s?” she was asked. Ms Sjoberg replied in the affirmative.
“Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” she was also asked. “He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”
Mr Copperfield, she said in the deposition, didn’t tell her any specifics of that question. “Did he say whether they were teenagers or anything along those lines?” she was also asked. “He did not.”
Donald Trump, whose association with Epstein has been widely reported, was also mentioned in the documents; the former US president is not accused of wrongdoing. In Ms Sjoberg’s deposition, she said that they went to one of Mr Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City when a storm prevented Epstein’s plane from landing in New York City.
“Jeffrey said, Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to – I don’t recall the name of the casino, but – we’ll go to the casino.” Asked at one point whether she ever gave Mr Trump a massage, Ms Sjoberg said “no”.
The deposition also includes Ms Sjoberg’s account of allegedly meeting Prince Andrew at Epstein’s New York home. “Ghislaine asked me to come to a closet. She just said, Come with me. We went to a closet and grabbed the puppet, the puppet of Prince Andrew,” she said in the deposition.
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“And I knew it was Prince Andrew because I had recognised him as a person. I didn’t know who he was. And so when I saw the tag that said Prince Andrew, then it clicked. I’m like, that’s who it is.”
Ms Sjoberg and Maxwell then returned to the living room with the puppet. “I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap,” Ms Sjoberg recalled. “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.”
Ms Sjoberg said she went to bed shortly thereafter. “Did you hear Ghislaine Maxwell tell Virginia to do anything while you were in that room?” she was asked. Sjoberg replied: “No.”
Ms Giuffre, who claimed that Epstein and Maxwell forced her into a sexual encounter with Prince Andrew at age 17, had sued the publishing heiress for defamation after claiming the accuser lied. Ms Giuffre settled her lawsuit against Maxwell in 2017.
In 2021, Ms Giuffre sued Prince Andrew over the alleged sexual abuse. The suit settled in early 2022. The prince has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, he agreed to donate to Ms Giuffre’s victims’ rights charity.
The documents’ release is among several tranches of filings in Ms Giuffre’s civil case that were unsealed following the Miami Herald’s years-long effort to make them public. Ms Giuffre did not make allegations of wrongdoing against Mr Clinton.
In one set of documents released in July 2020, Ms Giuffre claimed that Maxwell participated in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teen girls. These documents were released several weeks after Maxwell’s arrest for her involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Ms Giuffre claimed that Maxwell lured her into Epstein’s perverse orbit under the false pretence of work as a professional masseuse. Instead, Ms Giuffre said, Maxwell “trained me as a sex slave”, according to a filing in that set of unsealed court papers.
The documents released in July 2020 also provided insight into Maxwell and Epstein’s relationship.
In a January 2015 email exchange, Epstein told Maxwell: “You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it ... go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it.”
A large collection of documents in Ms Giuffre’s civil case were also unsealed in August 2019. Those papers included accusations, since denied, that global leaders were participants in Epstein’s trafficking ring.
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. – Guardian