HUNDREDS of sealed court filings pertaining to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein are set to be made public this week, and several prominent names – including Britain’s Prince Andrew and former US president Bill Clinton – are expected to appear in the documents, ABC News reported.
US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president’s name and more than 150 names other “John and Jane Does” mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1.
Former US president Clinton, who ABC News learned is identified as “Doe 36,” is mentioned in more than fifty of the redacted filings, according to court records.
The documents stem from a 2015 civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein’s one-time paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim. Giuffre also accused Epstein and Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Prince Andrew and several other prominent men. Prince Andrew denied the allegations and claimed he could not recall ever meeting Giuffre. He later settled a lawsuit she filed against him.
ABC News reports former US president is identified as ‘Doe 36’ in redacted documents
Maxwell, meanwhile was convicted in 2021 on five of six counts related to the abuse and trafficking of underage girls. She was then sentenced to a 20-year prison term, which she is appealing.
After the verdict, Maxwell’s attorneys cited her connection to former President Clinton’s charitable work as part of her effort for a reduced sentence, including a claim of “helping develop the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a sentencing memo filed with the court.
Most of the prominent names that appear in the documents are already associated in some way with Epstein; for allegations of wrongdoing, for having worked for Epstein, flown on his planes, or visited his homes. Some were mentioned during Maxwell’s criminal trial in 2021. In some instances, the only appearances of the names are in potential witness lists or in proposed terms for searches of electronic records.
But Giuffre’s claim that she met the ex-president on Epstein’s private Caribbean island emerged as a contentious issue in the litigation, which was settled in 2017. Maxwell contended Clinton had never been to Epstein’s island and assailed Giuffre’s claim as a fabrication that shattered her credibility.
Personal flight logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots – which surfaced in separate lawsuits against Epstein – showed that Clinton and his entourage had flown extensively on Epstein’s jumbo-jet to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei in 2002 and 2003. But none of the available records included the former president on a trip to Epstein’s island.
The court documents to be unsealed this week represent the eighth, and likely final, round of unsealing records from the case since the Miami Herald intervened for access to the records in 2018.
According to portions of the court record that were not sealed, Giuffre’s legal team initiated informal discussions with attorneys for the then-unnamed witness on June 9, 2016. That was a few days after the former president’s wife, Hillary Clinton, clinched the Democratic nomination for president.
Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2024
