The second set of documents was released on Thursday from the lawsuit connected to millionaire and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein who died in 2019 in jail before he could face trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
The explosive documents, including the ones that are yet to be unsealed, name prominent figures like Britain's Prince Andrew, former US Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, artist Michael Jackson, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking etc
The second set of documents was released on Thursday from the lawsuit connected to millionaire and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein who died in 2019 in jail before he could face trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein, alleging that he had abused them at his houses in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico.
The second batch of documents, a total of over 320 pages, includes names of Doug Band, a former aide to ex-President Bill Clinton; Yucaipa Companies co-founder Ron Burkle; journalists Vicky Ward and Sharon Churcher; and Eva Dubin, wife of billionaire Glenn Dubin.
The documents, including the ones that are yet to be unsealed, name prominent figures like Britain's Prince Andrew, former US Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, artist Michael Jackson, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking etc., and are expected to include nearly 200 names, including some of Epstein’s accusers, prominent businesspeople, politicians and potentially more.
In one unsealed email from 2011, Giuffre alleged that former President Bill Clinton threatened a magazine to not write sex-trafficking articles about Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier and sex offender who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. A millionaire known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and the who's who, Epstein was initially arrested from Florida's Palm Beach in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.
Not everyone named in the unsealed documents was accused of or committed wrongdoing. These documents include a variety of materials, from legal arguments and evidence to testimonies detailing allegations and descriptions of purported crimes, many of which seem to have already been made public through previous disclosures, media discussions, and other channels.
One document, as mentioned in a CNN report, is a deposition from Palm Beach Detective Joseph Recarey and sheds light on a process where he says Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell used to find and recruit girls “to perform massages and work at Epstein’s home.” Recarey was the lead detective on a previous case against Epstein in the mid-2000s.
In the document, when asked by an attorney how many girls Recarey had spoken to about being recruited by Maxwell, Recarey answered, “I would say approximately 30... 30, 33.”
“And at the end of that massage, if that victim brought other friends, she would get paid for the recruitment of those friends?” the attorney asked Recarey, to which the latter respond "correct". Recarey also said that the massages were for "sexual gratification".
The documents also mention one of the accusers saying she thought the massage she was supposed to give did not involve any sexual activity, adding that he assumption was wrong.
“I just was there, and all of a sudden something horrible happened to me,” she said of her experience with Epstein, adding, “it wasn’t supposed to be sexual, but it was.”
The documents still contain names that have not been revealed. In 2011, an email sent by journalist Sharon Churcher to a blacked-out recipient makes reference to someone being trafficked to “men including two of the world’s most respected politicians,” followed by a parenthetical aside including two names redacted by solid black bars, the CNN report mentioned.
Some names are likely to remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who were sexually abused.
The unsealed court documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein's offer through a 2015 to Ghislaine Maxwell, his associate who is serving 20-year prison term, to issue a reward disproving an alleged claim involving Stephen Hawking in an "underage orgy."
People Magazine said in a report that Jeffrey Epstein spoke about offering a reward to disprove a purported allegation made by Virginia Giuffre that Stephen Hawking had taken part in an "underage orgy", the documents say.
In the email from 2015, Epstein suggested rewarding anyone who could help disprove Giuffre's allegations. "You can issue a reward to any of Virginia's friends acquaints family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false. The strongest is the Clinton dinner, and the new version in the Virgin Islands that Steven Hawking participated in an underage orgy," Epstein wrote in the email.
No other references to this allegation were found in the documents.
Hawking, the late renowned physicist who passed away in 2018, is among the people named in these documents. However, there were no specific allegations directly from Giuffre regarding Hawking, who has never faced charges of sexual misconduct. Notably, Hawking visited Epstein's private Caribbean island in 2006 as part of a scientific conference trip to St. Thomas, shortly before Epstein's initial charges were filed.
Little Saint James, often referred to as "Pedophile Island" or "Orgy Island," was a private island owned by Jeffrey Epstein, situated in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The island became notorious following Epstein's arrest and subsequent accusations of sex trafficking and abuse involving underage girls. Allegations suggested that Epstein used the island as a location to exploit and abuse young women. Many victims came forward with accounts of being flown to Little Saint James and subjected to sexual exploitation by Epstein and his associates.