Dozens of court documents related to the convicted sex felon Jeffrey Epstein and unsealed Wednesday include the names of several prominent figures. Among them: former President Bill Clinton and former President Donald Trump.
Neither Clinton nor Trump have been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Where did the documents come from?
A photo of Jeffrey Epstein and girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell at a news conference in 2020. (John Minchillo/AP)
The documents — which total nearly 1,000 pages — were part of a 2015 defamation lawsuit brought against Epstein and his former girlfriend and convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, by Virginia Giuffre, one of their accusers.
In the documents, Giuffre alleged that many of sexual encounters occurred under the guise of massages that Maxwell, a British socialite, procured for Epstein and others.
Giuffre claimed that while she was a teenager, Epstein and Maxwell pressured her into sexual encounters with powerful men, including Prince Andrew. Giuffre reached an out-of-court settlement with Andrew, who denied her allegations.
U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered the unsealing of the documents in mid-December, saying that most of the information and names in them were already public.
What do they say about Clinton and Trump?
Jeffrey Epstein in 2017, from the N.Y. Sex Offender Registry. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP)
The newly unsealed documents include the transcript of a 2016 deposition in which a second accuser, identified as Johanna Sjoberg, testified that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.” She did not elaborate.
Sjoberg testified that Epstein told her he would take her to Trump’s Atlantic City casino but did not allege any wrongdoing. She also said in a deposition that Prince Andrew had inappropriately touched her at Epstein’s mansion in New York.
In all, Clinton’s name appears 73 times in the documents unsealed Wednesday; Trump’s name appears four times.
What was Clinton’s relationship with Epstein?
Former President Bill Clinton. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
The former president has acknowledged that he had flown on Epstein’s plane and had met with the jet-setting financier on several occasions.
In previously released court documents, Giuffre said that she met Clinton on Epstein’s private Caribbean island but did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Clinton denied ever visiting the island, and she later retracted the claim.
In 2019, after Epstein was arraigned on federal sex-trafficking charges, Clinton’s office released a statement saying the former president knew “nothing about the terrible crimes” Epstein was accused of.
Epstein hanged himself at the Metropolitan Correctional Center a month later.
What was Trump’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell?
Donald and Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2000. (Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)
Trump and Epstein were longtime friends well before Trump became president.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
In 2005, Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach, Fla., on charges he paid a 14-year-old girl for sex.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution. Under the terms of a secret agreement his attorneys cut with then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in county jail, with daily work-release privileges, and a related federal probe into potential crimes was dropped.
He was required to reach financial settlements with dozens of his victims and register as a sex offender, but Epstein could have faced up to life in prison if he had been convicted on federal charges.
After the plea agreement was revealed in a bombshell 2018 Miami Herald investigation, Trump defended Acosta, then his labor secretary, but distanced himself from Epstein, saying he “wasn’t a big fan.”
In 2020, while Maxwell was awaiting trial for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, Trump was asked for his thoughts about the case.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “But I wish her well, whatever it is.”
In 2021, Maxwell was convicted and later sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
What other prominent names appear in the documents?
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz. (Richard Drew/AP)
Other boldfaced names that appear in the documents unsealed Wednesday include Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and former Harvard Law professor; Bill Richardson, former New Mexico governor; Glenn Dubin, a billionaire hedge fund manager; Les Wexner, billionaire founder of Bath & Body Works; and Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent who killed himself in jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges he raped young girls.
More documents — and names — are expected to be released on Thursday.
Could the people named in the documents face any criminal or civil liability?
Not for merely being named.
“There is likely going to be a spectrum of involvement with respect to all the individuals identified,” Tom Bosworth, founder of Bosworth Law and an attorney for catastrophic injury victims, told Yahoo News. “Whether there is criminal or civil liability for any one person will depend heavily on the particular facts of each case.”
[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Giuffre later retracted the claim that she met Clinton on Epstein’s private island.]
Credit: Yahoo news
