A federal court in New York unsealed dozens of documents relating to the sex trafficker and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein Wednesday evening as the first step in a process to reveal more than 150 names of people who surfaced in a lawsuit accuser Virginia Giuffre brought against his former lover and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The unsealed Epstein documents didn’t provide the smoking gun that many hoped for,” says Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based trial attorney and former federal prosecutor who has been following the case. “There was no definitive list of who visited his infamous island, for instance, but there was enough to sully up some powerful people.”
But more documents are expected to be disclosed in the near future.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN DOCUMENTS: SEE ALL 40 UNSEALED FILES IN GHISLAINE MAXWELL LAWSUIT
Sarah Kellen and Jeffrey Epstein pose alongside Epstein’s private jet in an evidence photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice. This photo was one of many unearthed during Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in the Southern District of New York, where she was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for working with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Here are five revelations from the first batch of unsealed files:
Most of the attention-grabbing claims came in a deposition from Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, who had worked as a masseuse for Epstein.
Bill Clinton receives a massage from Chauntae Davies in 2002 at a small airport in Portugal during a fuel stop for Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 which was bound for Africa from New York. (Mega)
One of Giuffre’s lawyers, Sigrid McCawley, asked Sjoberg if she knew about a friendship between Epstein and the former president.
“I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton,” she said. “I did not know they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article about them going to Africa together.”
“Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?” McCawley asked.
“He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” Sjoberg said.
Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and his spokesman noted that the former president could have opposed the unsealing of his name but did not.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN LIST: COURT UNSEALS NAMES IN GHISLAINE MAXWELL LAWSUIT
Angel Urena, the spokesman, also denied claims in the documents that Clinton and Epstein had a personal relationship.
Sjoberg’s recollection of Epstein’s comments on Clinton were the “biggest bombshell” in Wednesday’s document dump, Rahmani said, but were also “very much hearsay.”
‘Reward’ offered to Giuffre’s friends and family to disprove her allegations
In a typo-filled email from Epstein to Maxwell, Epstein told his longtime lover and accomplice, “you can issue a reward to any of virginias friends acquaionts family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false.”
Jeffrey Epstein pictured in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 8, 2004. (Rick Friedman/Rick Friedman Photography/Corbis via Getty Images)
The “strongest” claims, he wrote, involved “the clinton dinner” and a bizarre allegation that the famed physicist Stephen Hawking participated “in an underage orgy.”
Hawking, who had a debilitating illness known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, died in 2018.
See the faces mentioned in Epstein documents
David Copperfield ‘did magic tricks’ at Epstein dinner
Sjoberg described David Copperfield, who was himself once accused of sexually assaulting a teen model, as a friend of Epstein.
Magician David Copperfield poses for a photo after holding a photo call to launch his first Australian show in 10 years and associated national tour, at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on August 6, 2009 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
She said he “did magic tricks” at Epstein’s house and then alleged that he asked her if she knew “girls were getting paid to find other girls” for the sex trafficker.
He did not elaborate, she said.
Copperfield is not accused of wrongdoing in connection with his Epstein ties, and he did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
DOZENS OF GHISLAINE MAXWELL FILES UNSEALED BY FEDERAL COURT IN SEX TRAFFICKING CASE
Prince Andrew and ‘the incident in New York with the puppet’
Sjoberg’s unsealed deposition also includes allegations that Prince Andrew groped her while she was sitting in his lap with a Prince Andrew puppet from the satirical BBC TV series “Spitting Image.”
Photo from 2001 that was included in court files shows Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre. Ghislaine Maxwell is standing to the right. (U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Early in the interview, she recalled meeting the British Royal at Epstein’s New York City mansion.
“At one point, Ghislaine told me to come upstairs, and we went into a closet and pulled out the puppet, the caricature of Prince Andrew, and brought it down,” she said. “And there was a little tag on the puppet that said ‘Prince Andrew’ on it, and that’s when I knew who he was.”
Then someone took a photo of Sjoberg, Giuffre, Prince Andrew and the puppet.
“They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap,” Sjoberg said. “And they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took the photo.”
Prince Andrew settled his own lawsuit from Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum. Although he has denied ever meeting her, an infamous photograph shows him with his arm around her hip and Maxwell in the corner.
While allegations against Prince Andrew have been reported in the past, Rahmani called the new transcript a “further black eye for the prince and the royal family.”
Epstein brags about knowing ‘Trump’
Sjoberg, a former Epstein “masseuse,” also brought up former President Donald Trump, claiming that years before his 2016 election, Epstein once claimed he’d call the billionaire businessman when his flight had to be rerouted to Atlantic City because it couldn’t land in New York.
From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)
“So we were sitting there, and the pilots told me to go back and tell him that we can’t land in New York and that we were going to have to land in Atlantic City,” she said. “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.”
“Although Trump is mentioned in passing, there is no allegation that he engaged in any type of sexual activity, so he came out unscathed, at least with respect to the first wave of unsealed documents,” Rahmani said.
Trump is not accused of any Epstein-related wrongdoing, and Sjoberg said she was never asked to engage in sexual contact with him and never gave him a massage.
Trump, speaking with reporters in 2019, said he knew Epstein as a fixture in Palm Beach, Florida, and “had a falling out with him a long time ago.”
“I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” the former president added.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel are seen onboard Epstein’s private jet, the Lolita Express. This photo was one of many unearthed during Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in the Southern District of New York, where she was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for working with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Aside from the allegations against Epstein, Maxwell and Prince Andrew, Wednesday’s documents do not appear to contain accusations of misconduct against anyone else named in the sex trafficker’s orbit. More files are expected to become public in the coming days and are expected to include people whom the judge identified as being named as defendants in Epstein-related lawsuits.
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“The allegations in the first batch of documents generally only consist of hearsay and innuendo,” Rahmani said. “That may be good enough for the court of public opinion, but it isn’t nearly enough to hold any of the other alleged perpetrators civilly or criminally accountable for sexual abuse.”
Fox News’ Houston Keene and Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.
