Some famous acquaintances disavowed Epstein after his conviction, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but many did not. Epstein continued to mingle with the rich and famous for another decade, often through charitable work.
Report via Miami Herald There was renewed interest in the scandal, and federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein with sex trafficking in 2019. He committed suicide in prison the same year while awaiting trial.
The US Attorney in Manhattan then prosecuted Epstein's ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, for helping recruit his underage victims. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
What are these records about?
The unsealed documents are part of a lawsuit filed in 2105 against Maxwell by one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. She is one of dozens of women who have sued Epstein, saying he abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico.
The summer she turned 17, Giuffre said, she was lured away from her job as a spa hostess at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club to become Epstein's “masseuse” — a job that involved performing sex acts.
Giuffre also alleged that she was pressured to have sex with men in Epstein's social orbit, including Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former US Senator George Mitchell, and billionaire Glenn Dubin, among others. All these men said her accounts were fabricated.
Prince Andrew has settled a multi-million pound lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre.credit: AP, BBC
Giuffre settled her lawsuit against Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre withdrew her accusation against Epstein's former lawyer, law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she “may have made an error” in identifying him as an abuser.
Giuffre's lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, however Miami Herald He went to court to view court papers initially filed under seal, including transcripts of interviews the lawyers conducted with potential witnesses.
About 2,000 pages were disclosed by the court in 2019. Additional documents were released in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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The batch currently released contains about 250 records containing sections that have been redacted, or sealed entirely, due to concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein's victims and other people named during the legal battle, but who were not complicit in his crimes. .
Only about 40 of these documents were made public on Thursday (AEST). More will be released in the coming days.
What can we expect to see?
US District Judge Loretta Preska, who evaluated the documents to determine what should be disclosed, said in December that she ordered the records made public because much of the information in them was already public.
Some records have been released, either partially or in full, in other court cases.
People mentioned include many of Epstein's accusers, members of his staff who told their stories to tabloids, people who served as witnesses in Maxwell's trial, people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but not accused of anything salacious, and people who Epstein was investigated, including prosecutors The general, the journalist, and the police investigator.
The judge said there were also prominent names of public figures known to have been associated with Epstein over the years, but whose relationships with him had been well documented elsewhere.
One of them is Jean-Luc Brunel, the French model agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on charges of raping underage girls when he committed suicide in a Paris prison in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual assault. .
His name was scattered throughout all the documents issued this time.
Both Clinton and Trump are involved in the court filing, in part because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell's lawyer about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein. One story quoted her as saying she took a helicopter ride with Clinton and flirted with Trump. None of those things actually happened, Geoffrey said. It did not accuse either of the former presidents of any wrongdoing.
Accuser Johanna Sjoberg testified in a newly released deposition that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein's Palm Beach, Florida, home, but nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.
“I met Michael Jackson,” Sjoberg said as part of the deposition. She didn't massage Jackson.
The judge said some names should remain redacted in the documents because they would identify people who had been sexually assaulted. 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 did.
When will the rest of the documents be published?
The judge did not set a target for when all the documents must be released, but more documents are expected to be submitted in the next few days.
AP
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