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Published: January 5, 2024
A new set of unsealed documents related to the sexual assault committed by Jeffrey Epstein on teenage girls was released on Thursday, adding several hundred pages to the information trove detailing how the financier exploited his relationships with the wealthy, powerful, and famous to recruit his victims and cover up his crimes.
The 19 documents, or about 300 pages, were half of more than 40 documents released on Wednesday. The documents so far – with more to come – are filled with the names of celebrities and politicians who contacted Epstein or worked with him in the years before he was publicly accused nearly two decades ago of paying underage girls for sex.
Most of these names were familiar to anyone who followed the scandal closely, including the criminal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein's former girlfriend, house manager, and head recruiter of vulnerable young females.
During Maxwell’s criminal trial two years ago, Epstein’s victims, some of whom aspired to become models or artists, described how he dropped the names of his famous and influential friends to imply that he was the victims’ ticket to reaching their dreams. Maxwell (62) was convicted of sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Nearly 250 documents have been disclosed starting this week in one of the lawsuits filed against Maxwell, mostly restating what has long been known about a man who traveled in elite circles until his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, which left him so trapped that he committed suicide in prison.
But they included some new details about the pyramid of abuses that grew over three decades, harming dozens of teenage and young adult girls.
Among the celebrities who were in Epstein’s orbit before he was exposed as a sexual predator were former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, singer Michael Jackson, and magician David Copperfield, according to accounts of his victims and other witnesses cited in newly released documents. None of these men have been accused of wrongdoing.
There were also repetitions of well-known stories about the British prince Andrew. A lawsuit was filed against him by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, who said she had sex with the prince when she was seventeen, and the prince, who denied the allegations, settled the lawsuit in 2022.
The court documents released now relate to the lawsuit Giuffre filed against Maxwell in 2015. Thousands of pages of documents in that lawsuit had been published previously, but some sections were redacted due to privacy concerns.
US District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered the removal of these redactions last month, mostly because the names in the documents had already been publicized through news coverage or other court proceedings.
Among the most interesting documents released Wednesday was the testimony of Joanna Sioberg in May 2016, who worked as a masseuse in Epstein’s house. Sioberg said she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida home, but nothing inappropriate happened with the late pop icon. Epstein also had homes in Manhattan, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands.
She also described a trip to New York in April 2001 where she said Prince Andrew touched her breast while taking a photo in Epstein’s Manhattan home.
Clinton previously said through a spokesperson that although he traveled on Epstein’s plane several times, he never visited his home, had no knowledge of his crimes, and had not spoken to him since his conviction. Trump also said he once thought Epstein was a “wonderful guy,” but they later had a falling out.
Sioberg also testified that she once went to dinner at one of Epstein’s homes attended by magician David Copperfield.
She said Copperfield performed magic tricks before asking if she was aware “that girls get paid to find other girls.” One of the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell was that some girls who were paid for sexual acts later recruited other victims. Sioberg said Copperfield did not clarify more specifically what he meant. Copperfield’s publicist did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The newly released records also include multiple references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent who was close to Epstein and who committed suicide in a Paris jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of raping underage girls. Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual assault.
Separately, a lawsuit was filed against Brunel’s estate this week by a woman who claimed that he and others sexually assaulted her while she was modeling in New York. She says that on one occasion, she was driven to a house in Canada and stayed there for several days while the men abused her. The lawsuit filed in California state court did not mention Epstein or Maxwell.
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