A New York judge on Wednesday began unsealing the identities of people linked to the Jeffrey Epstein case
New Delhi:
Jeffrey Epstein loved to socialise with the world’s elite before and after he was exposed as a sex trafficker and a paedophile, show a new batch of documents presented in court today. The investigation documents, which were previously sealed, detail how the financier leveraged his connections with the rich and famous to recruit his victims and cover up his crimes.
A New York judge on Wednesday began unsealing the identities of people linked to the Jeffrey Epstein case, the US financier who killed himself in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.
The documents stem from a 2015 civil suit by Virginia Giuffre, who says she was one of the many young girls trafficked by Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Some of the notable inclusions in the documents, which include almost 1,000 pages of depositions and statements, were former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, physicist Stephen Hawking, and pop star Michael Jackson.
The documents include the testimony of Epstein’s former butler Alfredo Rodriquez, who recalled paying cash to young girls who visited Epstein’s property in Palm Beach, Florida, and Johanna Sjoberg, who claimed Prince Andrew placed a hand on her breast once at Epstein’s house. Sjoberg testified that Epstein told her “Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” according to one unsealed document.
The latest set of declassified information had accounts of some of Epstein’s victims who took payments of $200 to give him and his friends massages. Most of his young victims were high school students, the documents reveal.
The documents also include an email exchange between Epstein accuser Giuffre and journalist Sharon Churcher. In the 2011 exchange, Churcher tells Giuffre that she is correct to be concerned about “what side” Vanity Fair was taking in a story involving Epstein.
Giuffre responds with an unsubstantiated claim that Bill Clinton stormed into Vanity Fair and threatened the magazine over the story.
“When I was doing some research into VF yesterday, it does concern me what they could want to write about me considering that B.Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficing [sic] articles about his good friend J E,” Giuffre wrote in her email.
Giuffre, who now lives in Australia, has been one of the most outspoken Epstein victims, drawing attention to high-profile individuals who were in Epstein’s orbit. In her suit against Prince Andrew, she claimed he was one of several powerful men to whom Epstein “lent” her for abuse. The royal family later stripped King Charles’ younger brother of his honorific titles and royal patronages.
Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019 but died by suicide in a Manhattan prison cell before he could stand trial. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.