Clinton, Trump, Hawking, MJ: Many celebs on ‘Epstein list’, not all accused

A US court late Wednesday (January 3) started releasing a fresh batch of previously secret court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Social media has been rife in recent weeks with posts speculating the documents would include a list of rich and powerful men who were Epstein’s “clients” or “co-conspirators.” However, though the list mentions several big names, not all of them have been accused of wrongdoing.

Which documents have been unsealed?

The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands, and New Mexico.

This particular suit was against Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit Epstein’s victims and is serving a 20-year prison term.

Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the court had kept some documents blacked-out or sealed because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle.

The records also included the depositions of several of Epstein’s victims, many of whom have told their stories publicly previously.

Only around 40 of those documents were made public on Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days.

Who have been named?

Some of the high-profile names in the nearly 200 revealed in the documents include Britain’s Prince Andrew, former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, former US vice-president Al Gore, late popstar Michael Jackson, late scientist Stephen Hawking, actors Cate Blanchett, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Spacey, and Bruce Willis, supermodel Naomi Campbell, magician David Copperfield.

However, as mentioned previously, they are not necessarily accused of any wrongdoing. There were mentions of Epstein’s past friendship with Clinton — who is not accused of any wrongdoing in this particular lawsuit — and of Britain’s Prince Andrew, who previously settled a lawsuit accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl who travelled with Epstein.

Mention of Michael Jackson

Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg testified in a newly released deposition that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach (Florida) home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.

Mention of Prince Andrew

Besides the mention of Michael Jackson, Sjoberg’s May 2016 deposition also shed new light on an April 2001 trip to New York in which she said Prince Andrew groped her while they posed for a photo at Epstein’s Manhattan town house.

Giuffre also testified about an incident in March 2001, when she was allegedly trafficked to Prince Andrew. She claimed that Maxwell told her to “do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”. Prince Andrew has denied ever meeting Giuffre and has denied her claims.

Prince Andrew and Giuffre have already reached an out-of-court settlement in her sexual abuse case against him. Andrew has denied all allegations.

Mention of Donald Trump

On the way to New York, Sjoberg testified, Epstein’s jet diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and spent a few hours at one of Donald Trump’s casinos, because of bad weather.

Upon hearing the change of plans, Sjoberg recalled Epstein saying, “Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to” the casino. Sjoberg wasn’t asked if they’d met up with Trump that night. Later in her testimony, she said she was never asked to give Trump a massage.

In her deposition, Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was lured 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.

Mention of Bill Clinton

Sjoberg also testified that though she never met Clinton, Epstein once remarked to her that “Clinton likes them young,” a remark she took as a reference to young women or girls.

According to media reports, Clinton has been mentioned 50 times in sealed records. Giuffre did not accuse Clinton, but she claimed to have seen him with two young women on Epstein’s island, which Clinton has denied ever visiting. However, flight records reveal that he did use Epstein’s plane for trips to Paris, Bangkok, and Brunei, for instance.

Clinton’s spokesperson had claimed in 2019 that the former US president had flown on Epstein’s private plane without knowing anything about his “terrible crimes.”

Mention of Stephen Hawking

In 2015, shortly after Giuffre filed the suit, Epstein reportedly sent an email to Maxwell, asking her to “issue a reward” to any of Giuffre’s friends, acquaintances, or family members so that they would counter her claims that “Hawking participated in an underage orgy”. According to the email, the accusation is false.

Mention of David Copperfield

Sjoberg reportedly said that Copperfield had attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and performed “some magic tricks”.

Copperfield reportedly asked Sjoberg whether she “was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls” but did not tell her any specifics of that question.

Other mentions

The records released on Wednesday included many references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling agent close to Epstein. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse.

Who was Jeffrey Epstein?

Epstein was a millionaire known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires, and academic stars. He was first detained in 2005 on suspicion of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.

He was finally arrested on July 6, 2019, for sex trafficking. On August 10 of that year, he killed himself in jail while awaiting trial.

Maxwell, his former girlfriend, was convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking and similar charges for procuring teenage girls for Epstein.

Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years’ imprisonment. She has maintained her innocence and is appealing against her conviction.

Misinformation abounds

Around 2,000 pages were made public by a court in 2019, and further documents were disclosed in 2020, 2021, and 2022. And yet more are to come.

Even before Wednesday’s documents were released, misinformation about what was in them abounded. Social media users wrongly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear in the documents. Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein.

(With agency inputs)