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Jeffrey Epstein Sex Scandal Documents: Read Them for Yourself
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By Associated Press
Published 1 year ago on
January 4, 2024

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The 40 documents released late Wednesday largely mention figures whose names were already known, including high-profile friends of Epstein’s and victims who have spoken publicly. In fact, the judge who made the call last month to release the information said she was doing so largely because much of it is already public.

This is a link to the documents.

Still, the plan to release the documents prompted rumors of a list of “clients” or “co-conspirators,” and misinformation about their contents ran rampant 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 Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”

Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.”

The documents unsealed Wednesday are the latest of thousands previously made public in lawsuits involving Epstein. About 250 more are expected to be released in the future.

Here’s what we know about the documents released so far:

WHO IS JEFFREY EPSTEIN?

A millionaire known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires, and academic stars, Epstein was initially arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Dozens of other underage girls described similar sexual abuse, but 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.

Some famous acquaintances abandoned 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 philanthropic work.

Reporting by the Miami Herald renewed interest in the scandal, and federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking. He killed himself in jail while awaiting trial.

The U.S. attorney in Manhattan then prosecuted Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell for helping recruit his underage victims. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison term.

WHAT ARE THESE RECORDS ABOUT?

The documents being unsealed are part of a 2015 lawsuit filed against Maxwell 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 Florida, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and New Mexico.

Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein — a job that involved performing sexual acts.

Giuffre also claimed she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, and the billionaire Glenn Dubin, among others. All of those men said her accounts were fabricated.

Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre 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.

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.

The batch currently being released contains around 250 records with sections that were blacked out or were sealed entirely because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle but weren’t complicit in his crimes.

Only around 40 of those documents were made public Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days.

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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