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Jeffrey Epstein documents unsealed, naming Prince Andrew and former President Clinton

CNN — 

Hundreds of pages of unsealed documents from a lawsuit connected to accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released on Wednesday. This is the first set of documents to be unsealed under a December 18 court order, with more expected in the coming weeks.

The documents in total, including material yet to be unsealed, are expected to include nearly 200 names, including some of Epstein’s accusers, prominent businesspeople, politicians and potentially more.

The first batch of documents didn’t appear to contain any bombshell revelations. Much of the information in them has already been released through media reports and other court proceedings. But this is the first time these documents, filed with a court, have been released through the legal system.

Attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell said in a statement on Wednesday: “She has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence.”

The documents contain excerpts of depositions taken of Maxwell and Virginia Roberts Giuffre. There is also a deposition from Johanna Sjoberg, who in the document described Prince Andrew touching her breast in a joking manner while taking photos.

Sjoberg’s story has been public, but this is the first time her deposition has been unsealed. She worked sometimes for Epstein, and she has said that he pressured her to go beyond her comfort level at times in giving sexualized massages.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre previously reached an out-of-court settlement in her sexual abuse lawsuit against him, according to a court document filed by her attorneys Tuesday. Andrew has denied the allegations against him.

The deposition transcripts include references to several prominent names, as has been previously reported, including Andrew as well as Bill Clinton, the former US president.

Sjoberg recalled in her 2016 deposition that Epstein spoke to her about Bill Clinton.

“He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” she said.

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When asked if Clinton was a friend of Epstein’s, she said she understood Epstein had “dealings” with Clinton.

A spokesman for Clinton confirmed in 2019 that the former president had flown on Epstein’s private plane but said Clinton knew nothing of the financier’s “terrible crimes.”

A Clinton spokesman on Wednesday reiterated that 2019 denial and told CNN that it has now “been nearly 20 years since President Clinton last had contact with Epstein.” Clinton has not been accused of any crimes or wrongdoing related to Epstein.

In her deposition, Johanna Sjoberg also recalled a time she was with Epstein on one of his planes and pilots informed them they needed to land in Atlantic City. Epstein then suggested they contact Donald Trump.

“Jeffrey said, Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to – I don’t recall the name of the casino, but – we’ll go to the casino,” Sjoberg said.

Sjoberg later said in her deposition she never gave a massage to Trump. Trump is not accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein in the documents.

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Giuffre alleged in her deposition that Maxwell directed her to have sexual contact with people including former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Prince Andrew, tech guru Marvin Minsky, well-known French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel and American investor Glenn Dubin.

A Dubin spokesperson said in a statement in 2019, when Giuffre’s allegations were previously made public, that “”Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations against them in the unsealed court records and categorically reject them.” The statement was widely reported at the time, including in the Washington Post, the Hill and Vanity Fair.

The same portion of that deposition still has three unnamed people that were not revealed Wednesday. Giuffre alleges Maxwell directed her to have sexual relations with an “unnamed prince,” the “owner of a large hotel chain” and a completely redacted out name.

It is not clear from the document whether Giuffre subsequently had sexual contact with any of the people named.

Other records unsealed are legal motions filed by the attorneys.

The documents are filings from a settled case brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an American woman who claimed Epstein sexually abused her as a minor and that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, aided in the abuse.

Many of the alleged victims and associates have given public interviews and have already been identified in the media. Inclusion in the newly unredacted documents is not an indication of wrongdoing or lawbreaking.

Some victims’ names remain redacted due to the sensitive nature of the crimes, according to court filings.

Epstein was indicted in 2019 on federal charges of operating a sex trafficking ring in which he allegedly sexually abused dozens of underage girls.

Epstein died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial. Prosecutors in New York indicted Maxwell on sex trafficking charges involving multiple victims. She was convicted in 2021.

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Pizzagate, QAnon and the ‘Epstein List’: Why the Far Right Is Obsessed with Sex Trafficking

#Epstein #EpsteinList #Epsteinadasi #EpsteinClientList EpsteinIsland EpsteinFiles EpsteinDocs

Aday before the so-called Epstein list was supposed to drop, far-right conspiracy theorists buzzed with excitement over the expectation that it would crucify prominent figures on the left for their involvement in sex trafficking. It’s a wildly popular notion in that world, where Pizzagate and QAnon fantasies run rampant.

The truth, of course, was far different: The material made public in federal court last week, with more now being released, wasn’t some kind of Jeffrey Epstein client list, as had been speculated online. It was actually documents from a court case filed by one of Epstein’s victims that did include people’s names, but provided little new information on whether they knew of or participated in Epstein’s heinous crimes.

To get a sense of why conspiracy theories centered on sex trafficking and pedophilia — and now the “Epstein list” — are so buzzy in MAGA circles, POLITICO Magazine called up Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything and Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories.

Rothschild pointed to a toxic stew of age-old antisemitism; the worst incentives of today’s social media; and the right’s unending obsession with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump pops up in the documents, including some released on Monday, but that’s typically not a problem for his hard-core supporters. As with most conspiracy theories, adherents create their own reality.

“There’s nothing Trump can do that will lose these people’s loyalty,” Rothschild said. “Anything that is inconvenient, that alters their worldview, they’ll just ignore it, or they’ll make up some bizarre justification for it.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the conspiracy theories surrounding the so-called Epstein list?

The conspiracy theories are that this new release of documents is going to finally be the thing that brings down the elite trafficking cabal that’s been running the world for 6,000 years. There’s this perception that there’s been information that’s been held back by the courts or by politicians or the media, this is finally going to put everything out in the open.

And because I’ve studied these movements for so long, I know that these movements really revolve around this idea that there will be a document or a memo or a list or a recording. And that will finally be the thing that finally ends the evil grip of the New World Order, and it never does. They always move on to the next one.

A common misconception is that the list documented Epstein’s clients who partook in sexual acts with minors, but that’s not the case, right?

It’s not the case at all. It’s a dump of documents related to the case. It’s not the smoking gun that’s going to finally bring down all of these powerful ones. A lot of the information and many of the names that are being revealed in these documents have already been known. Some of them were redacted.

But so far, I don’t really think there’s much of anything that we’ve learned that really changes our perception of what Epstein did and kind of who in his orbit knew what, because we know a lot of that already. We know it because of tenacious reporting, and the courage of the accusers who have faced him.

Then why was there so much excitement for the list within MAGA circles online — especially when the list itself wasn’t even documentation of Epstein’s clients?

I think it really ties back to this industry of conspiracy theories about the Clintons. I think they really feel like this will be the thing that brings down Bill and Hillary Clinton. They’re still obsessed with the Clintons. And so anything that can serve as the final nail in their coffin, they’re going to rally around, even if, of course, Trump and a lot of the people around Trump are also implicated in all of these documents. They don’t care about that at all. It’s about the Clintons and the rest of the liberal establishment.

What is it about the Clintons that captivates far-right conspiracy theorists like this?

Part of it is that it’s already been three decades of this: The Clinton conspiracy industry started in the early 90s. It started with stuff like Whitewater, Travelgate, stuff that is ancient history now. But there was a really well-funded, very organized and popular effort to bring the Clintons down. And then of course, it resulted in the impeachment, it resulted in the dump truck full of conspiracies about Hillary Clinton when she ran for president. And even though they’re not really in the public eye much anymore, it’s so prolific that conspiracy theorists have stuck with them because they know what works. They’re just like a classic rock band playing the hits.

You wrote a book on QAnon. Based on your research, why are conservatives so obsessed with the theory that prominent left-wing figures like the Clintons are running pedophile rings? Where does that conspiracy theory originate from?

There’s always been a certain amount of salaciousness in these conspiracy theories, and there are theories going back about the awful sexual depravity of the Catholics or later on of the Jews. So you’re always going to find a certain amount of attention paid to any kind of conspiracy theory involving sexual proclivity of trafficking. And if it involves children, people immediately just lose their mind — even if these children don’t exist. There are no children who have been trafficked because of Pizzagate because Pizzgate isn’t real.

But if you just put out the suggestion there, it grabs ahold in a way that is difficult to dislodge. I think a lot of it has to do with antisemitism. I think a lot of it has to do with fear of the occult and Satanic panic. So you get all of these things that are mixed together: the anti-Jewish sentiment, the fear of Satanism. And, of course, now it extends to social media. So you have these powerful figures, in media, in politics, in culture, academia. It’s very easy to kind of put these people together as part of this vast conspiracy. And if there’s a conspiracy of them, well, they’re probably doing horrible things to children, too, because that’s what evil people do.

You’ve mentioned that all these conspiracy theories are connected. How does the Epstein saga fit into the broader ecosystem of far-right conspiracy theories, including QAnon and Pizzagate? Particularly when Epstein was never even a figure on the left?

The QAnon and Pizzagate people — they really have embraced Epstein as the most obvious example of these sort of high-level traffickings. Of course, with Epstein, a lot of it was true. He was doing these things, he was connected to this absolutely abhorrent behavior.

But part of what happens is we lose the ability to discern noise from signal. So you’re tarring as a pedophile anybody who had any kind of association with Epstein. And of course, most of the people who were associated with Epstein had nothing to do with what he was doing. Some of them may have known about it, some of them may have looked the other way. And they certainly have a lot of hard questions to answer about their associations with Epstein and what they knew. But just because a person had a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t make them part of sex trafficking rings. But it’s very easy to point at all of these people and say, “They’re all working together. They’re all hiding the same things. They’re all doing the same horrible things. And we’re the only people who will talk about it.”

Do you think if the Clintons weren’t involved, the “Epstein list” wouldn’t have blown up like this?

I really don’t think it would’ve. I don’t think it would have gotten quite the attention. I think there would have been some attention; you do have people in that world who are really obsessed with the idea of trafficking and Pizzagate and all that other stuff, but I think the Clinton connection is really what vaulted it into the stratosphere.

How did these people use the “Epstein list” as ammunition for their conspiracy theories, and how does the role of the internet factor into all this?

Internet is a huge part of it, and social media in particular. It spreads incredibly quickly, because it sounds believable and if you share it with some documents, it doesn’t matter if they’re real or not. The people who are passing this stuff around don’t care.

It’s very easy to spread these things around and very easy to ignore the parts of it that you don’t find to be palatable to your worldview, such as Donald Trump’s connections to it, and you play up the connections of people like Bill Clinton.

Do you see that misinformation about Epstein has been spreading more than other conspiracy theories?

I think it’s definitely spreading more. I think part of it is the fact that Twitter (now called X) has been so completely eviscerated as a source of truth. As soon as the documents came out, I started seeing fakes. And they were getting passed around by verified accounts with a million followers, who are making tons of ad money, because Elon Musk has completely eviscerated verification on Twitter. They have every incentive to pass fake documents along and if somebody says, “Oh, that’s not real,” who cares?

Disinformation and conspiracy theories spread so quickly and so readily on social media, while the rest of us are doing our research and writing our articles and doing our interviews, trying to figure out what this actually means. The people who believe this stuff have already decided what it means. And they don’t want to be told differently.

Twitter and people like Alex Jones and people like Steve Bannon, they have an alternative media ecosystem. These are not fringe people anymore. This is not the guy standing outside the football stadium waving a sign about the end is coming. This is a massive industry. You’ve got billions of dollars being pumped into misinformation, into these products, into these podcasts, into these books. It’s a job for a lot of these people, and they’re very good at it. They spread this stuff very quickly. They know it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not, their audience doesn’t care.

Trump’s appearance in the documents unsettled some conservatives, like Alex Jones. Others like Jack Posobiec rushed to Trump’s defense by posting screenshots from the released court documents, claiming that Trump was exonerated. How does Trump’s presence here complicate the worldview of MAGA conspiracy theorists, especially those who thought Trump would save the nation from pedophiles?

It doesn’t complicate it at all. They just sweep it away. There’s nothing Trump can do that will lose these people’s loyalty. Whatever his involvement is, they just pretend it’s not there. Or they say, “Well, he was only there because he was getting information on Epstein to give to the FBI.” I saw tons of that early on in QAnon. The idea that there’s some sort of undercover sting operation. I’m like, really? I don’t think Donald Trump could stay quiet about that for five seconds. But you believe it, you talk yourself into it.

So it’s a lot like a lot of Trump’s other associations, and I write about this in my book on the Rothschilds. The Trump Taj Mahal was actually saved from bankruptcy by Rothschild Inc. Their bankruptcy guy was Wilbur Ross, who helped structure the deal that got the Taj Mahal out of bankruptcy. And, of course, Wilbur Ross later became Trump’s commerce secretary. You’ve never heard a peep about it from Trump believers, they just sweep it away. Anything that is inconvenient, that alters their worldview, they’ll just ignore it, or they’ll make up some bizarre justification for it.

With Epstein, we know how bad he was. And there may be some people who have a difficult time because they wind up in one of these documents. But ultimately, it’s not going to change that Epstein was a horrible person, and that it was people who were connected to Trump who helped him get out of prison the first time, that it was the incompetence of the jail that allowed him to take his own life. That is not going to change. There’s not going to be a document that completely alters our understanding of what happened.

What does it take to change the minds of conspiracy theorists, especially when it seems they’ll jump through all sorts of hoops in order to distort their reality for the sake of their own beliefs?

Most people will not change their mind. Most people will double down, they will show absolutely no interest in being wrong. For a lot of these people, that’s the worst thing that can happen. They have to go back to their friends and family and say, “You were right, I was wrong, and I’m an idiot.”

Sometimes it does happen. You will find people who have gotten out of movements like QAnon or have broken away from the hardcore Trump worship because they’ll read something or they’ll hear something that they just can’t reconcile with how they see the world. And once you find one thing that doesn’t work for you and these movements, you start to find more of them. I liken it to a tapestry where if you pull on one thread, the whole thing immediately unravels. But you have to want to pull on that thread, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of it all, and you being left with a view that is completely collapsed. For a lot of people, that’s just too difficult. They just can’t handle it. So they just burrow into it more, and the more things go wrong, and the more predictions fail, and the more things don’t come true, the more they believe because they just have nowhere else to go.

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Documents name alleged Jeffrey Epstein associates previously identified by accuser

Another batch of documents pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unsealed Tuesday.

The seven documents unsealed Tuesday total 1,482 pages. They're the last set to be made public pursuant to the court's order authorizing the release last month. Over 215 documents have been released since last week.

The unsealed documents include several depositions from Ghislaine Maxwell, one from Epstein, one from alleged Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre and another from Sarah Ransome, an alleged adult victim of Epstein, who was referenced throughout Monday's unsealing.

The records are part of a defamation lawsuit brought by Giuffre against Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion, that the two settled in 2017. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The Giuffre deposition included in the new batch comes from her testimony in a related defamation case filed by her lawyers against former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz in a Florida state court. In that deposition, she names billionaire retail magnate Les Wexner as "one of the powerful business executives" that she was trafficked to.

In this March 15, 2005 file photo, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.

Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images, FILE

Following Epstein's death in August 2019, Wexner accused Epstein of misappropriating "vast sums" of his personal fortune more than a decade earlier.

Wexner stepped down from his executive role at L Brands – the conglomerate behind retail staples Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works and Pink – in February 2020.

Wexner's charitable foundation did not immediately respond to ABC News' messages seeking comment on the filings released Tuesday.

The deposition also contains the names of men Giuffre has previously claimed she had been trafficked to, including Britain's Prince Andrew, Hyatt Hotel chief Thomas Pritzker, the late artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky and the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Pritzker and Richardson previously issued statements denying the allegations.

Minsky died in 2016, before Giuffre's allegations naming him were released in 2019 by the 2nd Circuit.

Giuffre's 2016 deposition also includes her claim that she met former President Bill Clinton not once but twice on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island toward the end of her time in Epstein's orbit in September 2002 – something he has denied.

Giuffre said she met Clinton "On Little Saint Jeff's," referring to the island properly known as Little Saint James

She claimed to have been at a dinner with Clinton and two girls: "Young, beautiful like every girl that's generally around Jeffrey."

The second meeting was also on the island and also involved a dinner, she said. "Very similar, I mean, there was a dinner, lots of laughing, lots of joking, it was just a dinner and then I didn't have to do anything with Bill Clinton, he was never sexually involved with me. I've never witnessed him sexually involved with anybody else. Jeffrey asked me for a massage after dinner and I went off to Jeffrey's cabana," she said.

Clinton, through a spokesman, denied in 2019 ever being on Epstein's island and said he was not aware of Epstein's criminal behavior.

No documentary evidence has been presented that Clinton was on the island.

Personal flight logs kept by one of Epstein's pilots -- which surfaced in separate lawsuits against Epstein -- showed that Clinton and his entourage had flown extensively on Epstein's jumbo-jet to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei in 2002 and 2003. But none of the available records included the former president on a trip to Epstein's island.

Maxwell also denied Clinton was ever on the island and Giuffre's efforts to depose the former president to ask him whether he had been on the island were rejected by a judge in June 2016.

In a January 2016 email to Maxwell, Epstein encouraged her to focus her effort to discredit Giuffre on Giuffre's version of "the clinton story" which he said could be "easily dsiporived," an apparent typo for "disproved."

Many of the documents released Tuesday have been unsealed and publicly available in various forms. The court is republishing them now with new portions unredacted.

The 134-page Epstein deposition had not been previously released but he was known to have invoked his Fifth Amendment right hundreds of times.

The records unsealed Monday included photos from Ransome and an exhibit that mentions discredited allegations Ransome made about Clinton, former President Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. She later admitted the claims were false.

Neither Clinton, nor Trump, nor Branson was accused by Giuffre, or anyone else besides Ransome, of any wrongdoing in the course of Giuffre's defamation lawsuit against Maxwell. Trump has said he cut-off contact with Epstein many years ago.

In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, the Virgin Group, on behalf of Branson, said Ransome's allegations against him are "false, baseless, and unfounded."

Prince Andrew has long denied allegations that he had sex with Giuffre on three occasions, as she has claimed in court records and interviews. In 2022, Andrew settled a case Giuffre brought against him.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted in 2021 of aiding Epstein's sex trafficking of young women and girls. Her appeal will be heard in March.

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Jeffrey Epstein's court files unsealed, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew emerge as big names

Court documents with names of people linked to sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were made public Wednesday (Jan 3). Former US president Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew – a member of the UK's royal family, as well as musician Michael Jackson and famed magician David Copperfield emerged as some of the big names.

A New York federal judge had earlier given orders for the release of the files as part of a lawsuit linked to Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell. She has been serving a 20-year jail prison sentence for crimes which she allegedly committed along with Epstein.

A total of 943 pages were released by the court. Some of the people named have been accused of wrongdoing and others present on the list are either potential witnesses or those making allegations.

Also read: Bill Clinton in list of 200 names linked to Jeffrey Epstein that will be released: Report

New York Judge Loretta Preska, while giving orders for making the names public, said that many of those who have been named in the lawsuit were already identified in Maxwell's criminal trial and by the media. The judge said that no objection was raised by others over the release of the documents.

'Clinton likes them young' Ghislaine Maxwell, in a deposition, talked about Andrew's visit to Epstein’s Island which is located in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein has faced accusations of abusing many girls on this island.

“Were you present on the island when Prince Andrew visited?” the investigators asked Maxwell. Responding in affirmation, she said, “I can only remember once.” Speaking about whether any girls were present on the island at that time, Maxwell said, “There were no girls on the island at all. No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.”

In one of the documents, a deposition given by Johanna Sjoberg was also included. Sjoberg was allegedly procured by Maxwell for performing sex acts on Epstein. In her deposition, Sjoberg said that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”.

Also read: Explained | Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues ‘beyond the grave’. Here’s all you need to know

The files also included Maxwell's testimony which confirmed that Clinton had travelled on the private jet of Epstein but added that she was not aware how many times. In the early 2000s, Clinton travelled on Epstein's plane for humanitarian trips to Africa and the former US president also praised the sex offender, calling him a committed philanthropist.

Michael Jackson, David Copperfield's Epstein connection Sjoberg added that Michael Jackson as well as David Copperfield visited Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. “Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey? she was quizzed. “I met Michael Jackson … at [Epstein’s] house in Palm Beach,” she said.

When questioned if she massaged Jackson, Sjoberg said: “I did not.” Talking about Copperfield, Sjoberg said that he came for dinner at one of the homes of Epstein and “he did some magic tricks”.

Watch: Joe Biden to speak at Valley Forge about US democracy

Sjoberg further replied in the affirmative when asked, “Did you observe David Copperfield to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s?”

“He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” she added.

Epstein contacted Trump? The document further included testimony in which Sjoberg said that she was informed by Epstein that he would contact Donald Trump while on their way to one of his casinos in New Jersey.

"Jeffrey said, 'Great, we'll call up Trump'," Sjoberg testified after it was said by the pilots that their plane could not land in New York and needed to be stopped in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

However, no alleged wrongdoing of Trump has been revealed in the documents. In 2019, Epstein was indicted on federal charges of running a sex trafficking ring in which dozens of underage girls were allegedly abused by him.

Epstein, while waiting for trial in the prison, allegedly died by suicide. Meanwhile, Maxwell was indicted by the prosecutors on sex trafficking charges.

#Epstein #EpsteinList #Epsteinadasi #EpsteinClientList EpsteinIsland EpsteinFiles EpsteinDocs