A second batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s unsealed court documents have been dropped just hours after 934 pages of records revved up interest again in the big names who associated with Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping recruit and abuse the convicted sex offender’s victims.
Many of those people have never been accused of any wrongdoing, but have nonetheless become the subject of a whirlwind of conspiracy theories. Others have, for years, been denying claims made by one of Epstein’s victims — Virginia Giuffre — that they participated in illicit sex.
The millionaire invited politicians and academics to his private island and luxury homes. He offered celebrities rides on his private jet. He and his girlfriend, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, hung out with princes and supermodels. They made donations that brought them into contact with leading philanthropists.
After Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, many of those people have apologized for associating with him and said they were unaware he was habitually abusing underage girls.
READ MORE: Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedophile island’ in the Caribbean
A second batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s unsealed court documents have been dropped just hours after 934 pages of records revved up interest again in the big names who associated with Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping recruit and abuse the convicted sex offender’s victims.
Many of those people have never been accused of any wrongdoing, but have nonetheless become the subject of a whirlwind of conspiracy theories. Others have, for years, been denying claims made by one of Epstein’s victims — Virginia Giuffre — that they participated in illicit sex.
The millionaire invited politicians and academics to his private island and luxury homes. He offered celebrities rides on his private jet. He and his girlfriend, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, hung out with princes and supermodels. They made donations that brought them into contact with leading philanthropists.
After Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, many of those people have apologized for associating with him and said they were unaware he was habitually abusing underage girls.
READ MORE: Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedophile island’ in the Caribbean
The court documents being released now are related to a 2015 lawsuit that Giuffre brought against Maxwell. Thousands of pages of documents in that lawsuit had been made public previously, but some sections had been blacked out because of privacy concerns.
U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered last month that those redactions be lifted, mostly because names in the documents had already been made public through news coverage or through other court proceedings.
The documents released Thursday largely focused on legal squabbles over Giuffre’s lawsuit and her connection to a British tabloid reporter whom Maxwell’s lawyers accused of compelling her to fabricate some of her allegations. They didn’t offer much new insight into individuals in Epstein and Maxwell’s world or the sexual abuse they were alleged to have perpetrated.
Among the more interesting documents released Wednesday was the May 2016 deposition of Johanna Sjoberg, who worked as a masseuse in Epstein’s household. Sjoberg said she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon. Epstein also had homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.
