Unsealed records offer new names in Epstein saga

Amid great hype, a court began to release a new batch of previously secret court documents late on Wednesday related to Jeffrey Epstein, the jetsetting financier who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Social media has been rife in recent weeks with posts speculating the documents would include a list of rich and powerful men who were Epstein’s “clients” or “co-conspirators.” There was no such list. The initial collection of around 40 documents made public largely contained material that had been released previously, or exhaustively had been covered in nearly two decades’ worth of newspaper stories, TV documentaries, interviews and books about the Epstein scandal. Still, the records — which included transcripts of interviews with some of Epstein’s victims — contained reminders that Epstein surrounded himself with famous and powerful figures, including a

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein

Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico. This particular suit was against Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit Epstein’s victims and is serving a 20-year prison term. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019 but died by suicide in a Manhattan prison cell before he could stand trial. Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the court had kept some court documents blacked-out or sealed because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle. Only around 40 of those documents were made public Wednesday. More will be released in coming days.

NEW YORK: few who have also been accused of misconduct.

Past friendships

There were mentions of Epstein’s past friendship with Bill Clinton — who is not accused of any wrongdoing — and of Britain’s Prince Andrew, who previously settled a lawsuit accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl who travelled with Epstein.

Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg testified in a newly released deposition that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s

Palm Beach, Florida, home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.

The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed 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

Deposition, memos

Among records released Wednesday were court memos in which lawyers for Giuffre complained that some of the women who had worked for Epstein were proving

AP Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew

AFP