Names in Epstein court documents released

The names of nearly 200 friends, associates, victims and opponents of Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex offender who hanged himself in a jail cell in 2019, were made public Wednesday by a US District Court judge.

Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York ruled last month that there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal more than 150 names of "John and Jane Does" mentioned in the records. Preska had ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan 1.

Being named in the documents doesn't necessarily indicate that a person participated in or was aware of the actions of Epstein or his girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The great majority of those whose names appear in the documents aren't accused of wrongdoing or have been mentioned previously in legal proceedings or news accounts.

But the list could show which prominent figures continued to associate with Epstein and Maxwell.

The documents stem from a 2015 civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein and Maxwell facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Epstein and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Giuffre 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. Epstein's estate has since paid about $150 million in settlements to more than 125 women.

Giuffre said that the summer she turned 17 she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club to become a "masseuse" for Epstein — a job that involved performing sexual acts.

Giuffre also claimed that she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein's social circle, including the UK's Prince Andrew. Those men said her accounts were fabricated. She 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 naming him. 

Over the years, some names have come out.

Epstein's former pilot, Larry Visoski, testified in 2021 that former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump had flown on Epstein's private plane. Other prominent passengers included Prince Andrew, violinist Itzhak Perlman, former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, the late Ohio senator John Glenn and actor Kevin Spacey, he said.

Clinton hasn't been accused of anything illegal. One of Epstein's victims said in court papers that she met the ex-president on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. Clinton has denied ever visiting the island.

Most of the names being made public — currently cited in the documents as John Does — have previously been identified in other court documents or in news reports as having been associated with Epstein.

A longtime friend of politicians, business executives and royalty, Epstein was accused of preying on girls as young as 14, bringing them to his homes and paying them for sex acts. He died at 66 by suicide in jail before he stood trial in Manhattan on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Dozens of other underage girls described sexual abuse, but prosecutors ultimately allowed Epstein 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 Clinton and Trump, but many didn't. Epstein continued to mingle with the rich and famous for another decade, often through philanthropic work.

Multiple news reports have said that Clinton will be among those named, though there is no indication that it will be in connection with allegations of wrongdoing, and Giuffre hasn't accused Clinton of any misconduct. His office said in 2019 that he had flown on Epstein's private plane but had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes, and a spokesman pointed to that statement on Tuesday.

"President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York," the 2019 statement said, acknowledging trips and meetings with Epstein in the early 2000s. It added, "He's not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade."