Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew in Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse revelations: 5 things you should know

Dozens of previously sealed court documents related to late financier Jeffrey Epstein were made public late Wednesday, as a court released more records from a years-old lawsuit. The judge, who made the call, wrote in December that she was ordering the records released because much of the information within them is already public and largely mention figures whose names were already known, including high-profile friends of Epstein and victims, who have spoken publicly.

Epstein was initially arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex followed by dozens of other underage girls describing similar sexual abuse. Prosecutors ultimately allowed the financier to plead guilty in 2008 to a charge involving a single victim. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program and continued to mingle with the rich and the famous for another decade, often through philanthropic work. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein in 2019 with sex-trafficking, along with reporting by the Miami Herald which renewed interest in the scandal. He killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. Here’s what we know about the documents released so far:

What are these records about?

Epstein was initially arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005. (File/ AP)

The documents being unsealed are part of a lawsuit filed against Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre who is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico. 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. in 2022. In 2022, Giuffre also 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.

How many records have been released?

Only around 40 of the batch containing around 250 records were made public on Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days. The revealed documents 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.

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 difficult to serve with subpoenas, as was Epstein himself.

What more can we expect?

Some records have been released, either in part or in full, in other court cases. 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.

Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. (File/ Getty images)

Which public figures have been mentioned in the records?

The records include 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 who 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 although she hasn’t accused either former president of wrongdoing. Giuffre also claimed she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, the former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former US Senator George Mitchell and the billionaire Glenn Dubin, among others. Ahead of the documents’ release due to misinformation on social media, users wrongly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear spurred by a joke New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” following which Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein.

When will the rest of the documents be made public?

The judge hasn’t set a target for when all of the documents should be made public, but more documents are expected to come in the next few days.

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