Names in Jeffrey Epstein court documents unsealed

New York federal court documents containing previously hidden names of people associated in some way with the late notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein began being unsealed Wednesday evening.

Many of the more than 150 people named in the civil court filings that are in the process of being released have previously been publicly disclosed as connected in some way with Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.

They include victims of Epstein who testified at the criminal trial of his procurer and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

The documents were filed in connection with a Manhattan federal court lawsuit by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell.

The fact that peoples’ names appear in the files does not necessarily mean they engaged in wrongdoing.

Only Epstein and Maxwell have been criminally charged in connection with his long-standing abuse of girls and young women at residences in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere.

Among the documents unsealed Wednesday was a deposition taken of Giuffre by lawyers for that suit and requests to take other depositions of other individuals by her lawyers.

One such request details how Maxwell in her deposition was unable to recall details about Epstein’s contacts with Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton, who both had been friends of the pedophile.

Andrew in February 2022 agreed to settle out of court a lawsuit filed by Giuffre accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was under the control of Epstein and Maxwell. Andrew has long denied her allegations, but his reputation has been wrecked because of them and because of his connection to Epstein.

Another Epstein accuser, Johanna Sjoberg, in a deposition unsealed Wednesday, was also asked about Clinton by Giuffre’s lawyer.

“Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?” Giuffre’s attorney asked

Sjoberg responded, “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”

Clinton has never been accused of sexual misconduct with women or girls connected to Epstein.

A spokesman for Clinton, when asked for comment by NBC News, referred to a statement issued in 2019 that said he “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 same statement in 2019 said that Clinton had not spoken to Epstein “in well over a decade.”

Sjoberg in her deposition, was asked if she ever massaged Donald Trump, another former president, who at one point was friends with Epstein.

On one occasion, she testified, she was on a plane with Epstein, Maxwell and Giuffre that landed in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Trump had casinos, after the plane’s pilots said they could not land in New York.

“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,” Sjoberg said.

Sjoberg also testified about an incident involving Prince Andrew at Epstein’s home in Manhattan, when Maxwell went to a closet and pulled out a puppet of Andrew, and then brought it to where the prince was sitting with Giuffre on a couch, and someone suggested taking a photo.

“And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap,” Sjoberg testified. “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.”

Sjoberg elsewhere testified that the magician David Copperfield was at a dinner at Epstein’s residence and that there was another young girl present.

Sjboberg said Copperfield “questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”

Epstein was known to receive sexual massages from girls and young women, some of whom had been recruited by other women for that purpose.

In Maxwell’s deposition, which was filed Wednesday, she was asked about the billionaire Glenn Dubin, a co-founder of the Highbridge Capital hedge fund.

“Did you ever instruct [Giuffre] to have sex with Glenn” Dubin, Giuffre’s lawyer asked Maxwell.

Maxwell replied, “I have never instructed Virginia to have sex with anybody ever.”

Dubin’s spokesman in 2019 denied claims by Giuffre that Maxwell had ever instructed her to have sex with him.

Also mentioned in documents unsealed Wednesday was the late modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, Epstein’s onetime lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the late former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Judge Loretta Preska ordered the unsealing in mid-December.

Preska has granted a 30-day extension barring the disclosure of two names, including a woman identified as Doe 107 to review her claim that she faces a risk of physical harm in her home country if her identity is publicly revealed.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence on charges related to recruiting and grooming young women to be abused by Epstein.

In a statement Wednesday, Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, said that since 2019, when Epstein was arrested and a federal appeals court issued a ruling about access to the court documents, “The public has wondered and many have rightly demanded to know how Epstein operated his vast, global sex trafficking enterprise and got away with it for decades.”

“Questions of who enabled and facilitated him and who participated in an operation that resulted in unspeakable harm and devastation to the lives of countless girls and young women quickly surfaced.  Some of those questions have been answered; many have not,” McCawley said. “Some justice for the survivors has, indeed, been achieved; not nearly enough as hoped for and deserved. The public interest must still be served in learning more about the scale and scope of Epstein’s racket to further the important goal of shutting down sex trafficking wherever it exists and holding more to account. The unsealing of these documents gets us closer to that goal.”

On Tuesday, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, during an interview on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” said in regard to the list of names, “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel are really hoping that doesn’t come out.”

“I’ll tell you what, if that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle,” Rodgers said.

Kimmel, the host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, quickly fired back at Rodgers in a tweet on the social media site X, formerly Twitter, suggesting he would sue the football player if he persisted in implying Kimmel had a connection with Epstein.

“Dear A——-: for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality,” Kimmel wrote in the tweet.

“Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”

McAfee apologized Wednesday on his show for “being part of” Rodgers’ comments.

— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Dawn Giel.