A torrent of court records relating to the child sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were released this week after the US district court for the southern district of New York ordered the unsealing of defendant and plaintiff files.
It began on Wednesday with nearly 1,000 pages filed as part of a 2015 lawsuit against Epstein’s close friend Ghislaine Maxwell by one of his victims, Virginia Giuffre. The disclosures will continue on a rolling basis until completed. Highly anticipated were the names of Epstein’s associates who had previously been anonymised using variations of J Doe. These included the former US president Bill Clinton, the late pop star Michael Jackson, the magician David Copperfield and Prince Andrew.
There were few surprises as most names had previously emerged during the years of legal cases over Epstein’s conduct. Many others were just mentioned in passing, with no suggestion they had done anything wrong.
So, what did the documents tell us?
The most interesting details came from excerpts of depositions involving Giuffre, who claimed that Epstein and Maxwell forced her into a sexual encounter with Prince Andrew at the age of 17, and Johanna Sjoberg, whom Maxwell allegedly procured for the purpose of performing sex acts on Epstein.
Prince Andrew
The documents contain allegations that Epstein forced a woman – named only as Jane Doe #3 – to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew when she was a minor at Ghislaine Maxwell’s flat in London, in New York, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands “in an orgy with numerous other underaged girls”.
This claim was contained in an unsealed motion from 2015 by two women named only as Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4. In a separate record of a deposition by Maxwell, asked about Andrew visiting Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, said she could only remember one occasion when he was there.
When asked if there were any girls on the island at that time, Maxwell, now serving 20 years in jail for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors, said: “There were no girls on the island at all. No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.”
In 2021, Giuffre sued Prince Andrew over alleged sexual assault on three occasions when she was 17, leading to speculation that Jane Doe #3 is Giuffre. The suit was settled in early 2022. Andrew has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
Another deposition includes Sjoberg’s account of allegedly meeting Andrew at Epstein’s New York home and him touching her breast. Maxwell got out a puppet of Andrew she kept in a closet.
“I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch,” Sjoberg said. “And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet … on her lap. And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”
Buckingham Palace previously said her allegations were “categorically untrue”.
Alleged details about Andrews’ time at Epstein’s Florida home emerged in a third tranche of files released on Friday evening. In a video deposition from 2009, Epstein’s former housekeeper, Juan Alessi, said the Duke of York had daily massages. Asked if it was sometimes more than one a day, Alessi said: “I can’t remember if he had more than one, but I think it was just a massage for him.”
Ghislaine Maxwell
Maxwell’s panic at being “lost in [a] US legal nightmare” is laid bare in an email to her lawyers in January 2015 in which she says: “I am out of my depth to understanding defamation and other legal hazards … I have never been in a suit criminal or civil and I want it to stay that way.” She tells her lawyers she is worried about “more questions … what is my relationship to Clinton? Andrew, on and on.”
She signs off: “Let’s rest till Monday. I need head space”.
In an interview under oath in April 2016, Maxwell was questioned on whether she introduced the duke to Giuffre in London, which she denied. “I understand her story about London but, again, her tissue of lies is extremely hard to pick apart what is true and what isn’t,” she said. “Actually I wouldn’t recollect her at all but for her tissue stories about this situation.”
Bill Clinton
A May 2016 document details the testimony of Sjoberg, who mentions the former US president. Sjoberg has said she was forced to perform sex acts on Epstein, being naked for a quarter to half of all massages. Sjoberg testified that “[Epstein] said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”. Clinton has staunchly denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
In a second tranche of court documents, a 2011 email from Giuffre to Sharon Churcher, a Mail on Sunday journalist, raised concerns about a forthcoming magazine article in “VF” – possibly Vanity Fair. Giuffre alleged in the email to Churcher that “B. Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficking articles about his good friend J.E.”
David Copperfield and Michael Jackson
Sjoberg said she met Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, and Copperfield, who she said was a friend of Epstein’s.
Asked whether she massaged Jackson, Sjoberg said: “I did not.”
Regarding Copperfield, Sjoberg said he attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and “did some magic tricks”.
“Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” she was asked.
“He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” she said.
“Did he say whether they were teenagers or anything along those lines?” she was asked. She replied: “He did not.”
Donald Trump
In Sjoberg’s deposition, she said she was flying with Epstein and Giuffre when they went to one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City because a storm meant their plane had been diverted from New York City to Teterboro airport.
“Jeffrey said, great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to … the casino,” she said.
Sjoberg said she never gave Trump a massage.
Stephen Hawking
The name of the late Cambridge physicist was included in a 2015 email in which Epstein told Maxwell to offer a reward to any of Giuffre’s “friends acquaitonts [sic] family” who could prove false an allegation that Hawking had participated in an “underage orgy” in the Virgin Islands. Hawking, who died in 2018, has not been accused of a crime related to Epstein.
