Records detail Epstein’s scandal

Documents reveal how girls were lured into depraved world

A chilling picture of how hundreds of girls and young women from around the world were trafficked for sex by Jeffrey Epstein, his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, and a number of other powerful business and world leaders emerged Friday in court documents unsealed in New York.

The documents, a portion of the thousands of pages that had been sealed in a 2015 federal defamation case, offer brutal details about Epstein’s trafficking of teenage girls from across the United States, Russia and Sweden — and Maxwell’s obsessive and often abusive quest to provide him with new girls over a span of years in the early to mid 2000s.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who brought the lawsuit against Maxwell and settled it for an undisclosed sum in 2017, is central to the case, providing evidence to substantiate her exploitation at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell through photographs, plane logs and even a medical record from Presbyterian Hospital in New York where Giuffre was taken by Epstein after a particularly abusive sex episode.

In a 2016 sworn deposition, Giuffre, now 35, also named a number of powerful men she says she was directed to have sex with, including the late scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel,

former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, 71, former Senator George Mitchell, 85, Hyatt hotels magnate Tom Pritzker, 69, and prominent hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, 62. She has previously identified Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, 80, and Prince Andrew, 59.

All the men Giuffre said she was directed to have sex with have issued denials, with some of them, including Dershowitz, insisting that they never met her. No charges have been filed against anyone other than Epstein, who was indicted last month on two counts of sex trafficking in New York.

Some of the testimony released Friday is difficult to read, as when one 15-year-old Swedish girl, shaking and crying in despair, told a butler who worked for one of Epstein’s closest friends that she had been taken to Epstein’s island in the Caribbean and forced to have sex with him and others. The butler, in a sworn statement, said the girl, visibly traumatized, told him that Epstein and Maxwell had physically threatened to harm her and seized her passport to keep her on the island, according to the butler’s statement.

The houseman, Rinaldo Rizzo, worked for Dubin and his wife, Eva, a former Miss Sweden and founder of the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai. Rizzo said that the girl was so distraught she couldn’t recall how she got back to the U.S. mainland but that it was Maxwell who returned her to the Dubin residence in New York.

The cache of court documents, part of the case’s motion for summary judgment, also shows in 2006, when the Palm Beach police were first investigating Epstein, he was being assisted by Maxwell as part of a pyramid-like scheme the pair operated to lure young girls from around Palm Beach, focusing on schools, colleges and spas.

Palm Beach Detective Joe Recarey testified in the case that he was never able to question Maxwell, but the fact that the police had evidence of Maxwell’s involvement raises new questions about why the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida failed to pursue sex trafficking charges against Epstein, Maxwell and others.

Giuffre, as part of her sworn testimony, also states that she met both former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and President Donald Trump, and that Epstein once held a dinner for Clinton on his island, Little St. James, off the coast of St. Thomas.

She said in a 2016 deposition she met Trump through her father, who worked as a maintenance man at Trump’s Palm Beach home, Mar-a-lago, and that to her knowledge, neither Trump nor Clinton had any intimate contact with “us’’ — referring to girls Epstein kept as sex slaves.

Giuffre’s attorney, David Boies, said that there is nothing in the Maxwell case that showed any wrongdoing by Clinton, Gore or Trump.

“We know both Trump and Clinton were associated with Epstein at various times in various ways, but in terms of of what we have, there’s no indication that any of three of them did anything improper.’’

But the powerhouse lawyer said there are a lot of people who knew what Epstein and Maxwell were doing.

“I think one of the general points worth making is how many people knew about this and did nothing, and how long it went on right in plain sight, hiding in plain sight,’’ Boies said.

Clinton has denied that he ever was on Epstein’s island.

Maxwell, in portions of her deposition unsealed Friday, refused to answer questions about whether she saw Epstein with any underage girls. She denied that she ever had sex with Guiffre, calling a liar, and at one point, pounding her fists on a table during questioning.

“Again, Virginia is absolutely totally lying. This is a subject of defamation about Virginia and the lies she has told and one of lies she told was that President Clinton was on the island where I was present. Absolutely 1000 percent that is a flat out total fabrication and lie.’’

The Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Brunel.

Devin Broda, a spokesman for the Dubins, issued the following statement:

“Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations in the unsealed court records, which are demonstrably false and defamatory. The Dubins have flight records and other evidence that definitively disprove that any such events occurred.”

A spokesman for Richardson issued a statement saying that he has never met Giuffre.

“These allegations and inferences are completely false... To be clear, in Governor Richardson’s limited interactions with Mr. Epstein, he never saw him in the presence of young or underage girls.”

“I have never met, spoken with or had any contact with Ms. Giuffre,” Mitchell told the Portland Press Herald. “In my contacts with Mr. Epstein I never observed or suspected any inappropriate conduct with underage girls. I only learned of his actions when they were reported in the media related to his prosecution in Florida. We have had no further contact.”

The civil case had previously been sealed by a federal court judge. The Miami Herald, which published a detailed investigation of the Epstein case last November, Perversion of Justice, petitioned the court in January to unseal the entire case. Two other parties, blogger Mike Cernovich and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz, had previously asked that certain portions of the case be unsealed.

Giuffre has said that Epstein forced her to have sex with both Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, an allegation they both have denied. An additional woman, Sarah Ransome, said that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with Dershowitz.

A three-judge panel agreed to release the documents in April. More are expected to be unsealed in the future.