Third set of Jeffrey Epstein papers was released as part of the ongoing process of releasing court records.
On Friday, a third set of documents about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was made public. These documents add to the large amount of information already known about Jeffrey Epstein and British lady Ghislaine Maxwell. The papers give more names and information about people who are linked to Epstein in different ways. Most of these people have not been charged with any crimes.
The papers, which include more than 190 exhibits and a total of 3,025 pages, are from a slander claim that Virginia Giuffre, an Jeffrey Epstein victim, filed against Maxwell. The case has since been settled. Maxwell, 60, used to be Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend. In 2021, she was found guilty of planning to sexually abuse girls under the age of 18 and given 20 years in federal jail for her part. Giuffre has said that Maxwell is “the mastermind” of the sex ring.
In December, the judge in charge of the case said that the papers should be made public while people whose names are on them file appeals. You can find the names of witnesses, accusations, Jeffrey Epstein staff, police officers, and other people in the hundreds of pages of depositions, incident reports, court records, emails, and other papers.
What kinds of papers are in this wave of files?
The videotaped statement of Jeffrey Epstein manager, Tijuan Alessi, in 2009 was made public on Friday. It included the names of several important people that Alessi said had visited or stayed at Epstein’s Florida home.
“Many celebrities,” including Britain’s Prince Andrew and Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, were seen at the house, Alessi said in court. Alessi said Andrew “stayed with us for weeks” and slept in the main guest bedroom while getting “daily massages.” “I think Sarah was there only once and for a short time.” She hasn’t been charged with any crimes.
In 2022, Prince Andrew settled a case with Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre said that he and Jeffrey Epstein abused her as a teen, but Andrew rejected the claim. At the time, his lawyers wrote in a court document, “Prince Andrew regrets his association with Jeffrey Epstein and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.”
Alessi also said that he saw Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., at the house, but he didn’t say when. Kennedy, who is now running for president as an independent, has said in the past that he flew on Jeffrey Epstein plane twice. He said he took the trip with his family because Ghislaine Maxwell knew his ex-wife. Kennedy has not been charged with any crimes.
Another paper that came out on Friday had the names of witnesses that Maxwell’s lawyers said might have information that could refute some of Giuffre’s claims.
Some other new documents are parts of depositions of witnesses, a list of vendor and service person phone numbers with notes written in pen, several emails between lawyers, a list of search terms used to look through electronic records as part of the discovery process, about 50 pages of handwritten phone messages from Jeffrey Epstein message book, and other court records related to discovery and other steps in the process.
Some parts of a copy of Maxwell’s videotaped interview were also made public. During the interview on July 22, 2016, her lawyer told her over and over again not to answer questions about sexual behaviours she or Jeffrey Epstein had. The other lawyer kept arguing with Maxwell’s lawyer about whether Maxwell could answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein massages.
Maxwell answered most questions with “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know” in an interview that was recorded three months earlier. In the 160-page record, Maxwell said that Giuffre was lying all the time and called her “an awful fantasist” in one conversation. Maxwell said she had never seen Jeffrey Epstein get a massage from someone younger than 18.
In the record of another interview, Sarah Kellen, who used to work for Jeffrey Epstein, also refuses to answer questions from the lawyers, citing the Fifth Amendment many times as her lawyer told her to.
One adult victim of Jeffrey Epstein has said that Kellen helped plan his meetings with girls and their travel. By way of a representative, Kellen told CBS News that Jeffrey Epstein “sexually” and “psychologically” abused her and that she “deeply regrets she had any part in it.”
The plaintiff’s lawyer asked Kellen if she had called any girls under 18 in Palm Beach or West Palm Beach in the last six years. Kellen said, “I don’t think so.”
Questions like “Does Jeffrey Epstein own private planes? Does he own a home on Palm Beach Island, Florida? Has she heard the word “manifest” before?” in the 24 pages of transcription seem like they could be anything. There are also claims that they helped Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell, and Epstein’s friend and modelling director Jean-Luc Brunel “bring in girls from out of state who were underage.
As a result of the renewed U.S. probe into Jeffrey Epstein, who had homes in France, French officials began to look into Brunel for rape of minors and trafficking of minors. He died in a French jail in 2019. Brunel had said he did nothing wrong. His name appeared on earlier papers that the judge ordered made public in December.
The texts and call logs of Jeffrey Epstein
Some of the papers that were made public on Friday were 51 pages of handwritten phone messages from Jeffrey Epstein staff.
The log shows that Leslie Wexner or his office made a lot of calls. Wexner, the founder and CEO of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret, gave Jeffrey Epstein control of his money for many years. As Wexner’s personal money manager and business advisor, Jeffrey Epstein made hundreds of millions of dollars. Later, Wexner spoke out against Epstein’s bad behaviour and said he didn’t know about it.
In 2019, Wexner told his workers in an email that he felt bad that he had ever “crossed paths” with Jeffrey Epstein. “When Mr. Jeffrey Epstein was my personal money manager, he was involved in many aspects of my financial life,” it said. “But let me assure you that I was never aware of the illegal activity charged in the indictment.”
The call logs showed that Harvey Weinstein sent one message on March 1, 2005, at 10:20 a.m.
A lot of people said that Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were friends, and they were sometimes seen eating together in Southampton. Weinstein was found guilty of rape and other crimes in New York in 2020. This was not connected to Epstein, and Weinstein was given a 23-year prison term. In Los Angeles, two years later, Weinstein was found guilty of three more counts of sexual assault as well.
What did earlier groups of Jeffrey Epstein papers that were not sealed show?
Earlier sets of papers, which had hundreds of pages and named more than 100 people, were released on Wednesday and Thursday. People were very interested in seeing the highly anticipated documents, but most of them were about accusations that were already known. In some cases, they gave more information than was known before, like transcripts of video depositions and police incident reports. The documents were also about the legal strategy for the defamation case between Maxwell and Giuffre.
A lot of people have called the papers lists, but only one of them that came out earlier this week was a list of names. Some well-known people are on that list, like former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, who have both denied any wrongdoing in the case. However, the list is just of people Giuffre’s lawyers thought about deposing in the lawsuit, not a charge of wrongdoing.
What is said to have happened with Jeffrey Epstein?
There has been a lot of talk and speculation about the case of the wealthy financier who was also found guilty of sex crimes linked to abusing girls under the age of 18. Jeffrey Epstein relationships and friendships with wealthy and powerful people, some of whom are mentioned in the documents in different contexts, have gotten a lot of attention, especially since he killed himself in jail in 2019 while waiting to be tried in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking conspiracy and a count of sex trafficking.
In 2008, Jeffrey Epstein made a deal with federal authorities in Florida to plead guilty to state-level crimes. In exchange, he didn’t have to face federal charges of sexually abusing girls under the age of 18. He spent 13 months in jail and was often let out on work release. He agreed to become a registered sex offender and pay payments to victims, but the victims were not told about the deal. This led to an investigation into what happened, which was still going on when he died.
The papers made public this week also show how the authorities think Jeffrey Epstein hired the girls he is accused of using for sex, which they called “massages” to avoid saying the truth. These girls were found during the initial investigation into Jeffrey Epstein alleged crimes. Jeffrey Epstein has been accused of many things over the years. Some say he abused people at his houses in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Florida, and on Little St. James, his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands near St. Thomas.