Social media has been rife in recent weeks with posts speculating that a judge is about to release a list of clients or co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

There is no such list and the truth is less scandalous.

Previously sealed court documents related to Epstein will be released starting Wednesday, but the great majority of those whose names appear in the documents aren’t accused of wrongdoing or have been mentioned previously in legal proceedings or news accounts.

Still, the document release has fueled misinformation. Social media users baselessly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear in the documents, spurred by a crack New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”

Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.”

“Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court,” Kimmel wrote.

Here’s what we know about the documents:

WHAT ARE THESE RECORDS ABOUT? The documents being unsealed are part of a lawsuit filed against Maxwell 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 U.S. Virgin Islands and New Mexico.

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.

Giuffre also claimed she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit, most famously with Britain’s Prince Andrew. All of those men said her accounts were fabricated. She settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre withdrew an accusation she had made against Epstein’s former attorney, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she “ may have made a mistake ” in identifying him as an abuser.

Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the Miami Herald went to court to access court papers initially filed under seal, including transcripts of interviews the lawyers did with potential witnesses.

About 2,000 pages were unsealed by a court in 2019. Additional documents were released in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

This next batch of around 250 records had sections that were blacked out or were sealed entirely because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle but weren’t complicit in his crimes.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE? U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, who evaluated the documents to decide what should be unsealed, said in her December order that she was releasing the records because much of the information within them is already public.

Some records have been released, either in part or in full, in other court cases. Much of the rest involve topics and people who have been exhaustively covered in nearly two decades’ worth of newspaper stories, TV documentaries, interviews, books and testimony at Maxwell’s criminal trial.

The people named in the records include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his staff who told their stories to tabloid newspapers, people who served as witnesses at Maxwell’s trial, people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but aren’t accused of anything salacious, and people who investigated Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist and a detective.

There are also boldface names of public figures known to have associated with Epstein over the years, but whose relationships 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 charges that he raped underage girls when he killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse.

Clinton and Trump both factor in the court file, partly because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell’s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein. One story quoted her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Trump. Giuffre said neither of those things actually happened. She hasn’t accused either former president of wrongdoing.

The judge said a handful of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who were sexually abused. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Giuffre has done.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    111·
    11 months ago

    404 media has a downloadable zip file, but I found that even though it SAID it extracted 81 documents, the folder only contained 40 or so PDFs.

    https://www.404media.co/download-the-jeffrey-epstein-documents/

    Edit:

    Mostly a list of unredacted legal documents, emails, and transcripts.

    Closest thing I can find to a “List” so far are documents 10 (requested depositions), 15 (emails), and 17 (privelege list). 39 is another email list.

    Still looking though, like I say, 81 documents…

    Edit 2 Document 28 is the Bill Clinton document, but the context is in how they failed in their due dilligence to get his deposition. There is no information that Clinton did anything wrong, in fact, quite the opposite.

    "On one occasion, she adds, Epstein did invite two young brunettes to dinner which he gave on his Caribbean island for Mr. Clinton shortly after he left office. But as far as she knows, the ex-President did not take the bait. ‘I’d have been about 17 at the time,’ she says. ‘I flew to the Caribbean with Jeffrey and then Ghislaine Maxwell went to pick up Bill in a huge black helicopter that Jeffrey bought her. She’d always wanted to fly and Jeffrey paid for her to take lessons, and I remember she was very excited because she got her license around the first year we met. I used to get frightened flying with her but Bill had the Secret Service with him and I remember him talking about what a good job she did. I only met Bill twice but Jeffrey told me they were good friends.’

    ‘We all dined together that night. Jeffrey was at the head of the table. Bill was at his left. I sat across from him. Emmy Taylor, Ghislaine’s blonde British assistant, sat at my right. Ghislaine was at Bill’s left and at the left of Ghislaine there were two olive-skinned brunettes who’d flown in with us from New York. I’d never met them before. I’d say they were no older than 17, very innocent-looking. They weren’t there for me. They weren’t there for Jeffrey or Ghislaine because I was there to have sex with Jeffrey on the trip. Maybe Jeffrey thought they would entertain Bill, but I saw no evidence that he was interested in them. He and Jeffrey and Ghislaine seemed to have a very good relationship. Bill was very funny. He made me laugh a few times. And he and Jeffrey and Ghislaine told blokey jokes and the brunettes listened politely and giggled. After dinner I gave Jeffrey an erotic massage. I don’t remember seeing Bill again on the trip but I assume Ghislaine flew him back.”

    Document 40: “IDENTITIES OF INDIVIDUALS LIKELY TO HAVE DISCOVERABLE INFORMATION RELEVANT TO DISPUTED FACTS ALLEGED WITH PARTICULARITY IN THE PLEADINGS”

    Huh - it SAID it extracted 81 files… but there were only 40 pdfs in the folder.