Hundreds of pages of newly released court documents involving the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein expose tawdry allegations about former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, and name magician David Copperfield, the late pop icon Michael Jackson and former President Donald Trump, among other high-profile figures.
The newly unsealed documents also revive questions about missing government evidence that may implicate other powerful figures.
None of the claims in the court documents are proven. But they expose Epstein’s connections with the rich and powerful and allegations of their involvement with underage girls lured into Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, as well as what the government may have learned about the matter dating back to a 2019 FBI raid on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.
According to allegations in the court documents, Epstein trafficked his young female victims “for sexual purposes to many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister and world leaders.”
The documents allege Epstein made the young girls available to powerful people “to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.”
In addition to Mr. Clinton, now 77, the documents connect Epstein’s victims with two once-prominent Democrats: the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Sen. George Mitchell, 90, who strenuously denies claims he had sex with any of the girls.
The documents also place Mr. Copperfield at one of Epstein’s dinner parties. A victim said he performed magic tricks and asked her if she was “was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls” for Epstein.
The newly released court documents, filed in federal District Court in Manhattan, are part of a now-settled lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims, Virginia Giuffre, and list the names of people long known to have associated with Epstein, including Mr. Clinton.
Epstein’s victims say Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell instructed them to have sex with billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and Hyatt Hotels CEO Thomas Pritzker, the unsealed documents disclosed. Both Mr. Dubin and Mr. Pritzker have denied the claims.
Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking and other offenses in 2021 and is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence.
The FBI raided Epstein’s New York townhouse in 2019, after Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell following his arrest on charges of sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. His death was ruled a suicide.
Agents broke open a safe in Epstein’s home and found a cache of tapes, CDs, passports and pictures. When they returned later to the property with a warrant to collect the items, they were gone.
The FBI also raided Epstein’s private Caribbean island where much of the sexual abuse involving the girls is alleged to have taken place. Some lawmakers are accusing the bureau of hiding evidence to protect the rich and powerful.
The agents were seen packing and removing several of Epstein’s computers from his island estate.
New court documents unsealed Friday include the testimony of one Epstein victim who said she helped remove Epstein’s computers from his Palm Beach home ahead of an FBI search of the property.
The raids and Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida that spared him sex trafficking charges and a long prison sentence have spurred accusations that the government took actions to protect the powerful at the expense of sex abuse victims.
“If the FBI was legit, the child rapists would be in jail but instead they hide the evidence & protect the rich and powerful elites in order to keep them under control,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, said.
Ms. Greene’s social media criticism of the FBI follows a claim by Ms. Giuffre in the unsealed testimony about efforts by the powerful to protect Epstein.
In an email between Ms. Giuffre and a reporter for the Daily Mail, she told the publication that Mr. Clinton in 2011 “walked into” the offices of Vanity Fair magazine “and threatened them not to write sex-trafficking articles about his good friend J.E.”
Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter denies Ms. Guiffre’s story. Mr. Clinton, who is not accused of any criminal wrongdoing, said he had not spoken to Epstein in over a decade before the 2019 charges and had never visited Epstein’s private island.
“President Clinton 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,” Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, Angel Urena, said in a 2019 statement.
The newly unsealed court documents make previously undisclosed and tawdry claims about the former president. In 2016 testimony from one of Epstein’s victims, Johanna Sjoberg, who said she was victimized by Epstein from 2001 until 2006, said Epstein told her Mr. Clinton “likes them young, referring to girls.”
Ms. Sjoberg also named Mr. Trump in the 2016 deposition. She told the court Epstein planned to “call up Trump” when his jet was diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Mr. Trump once operated a hotel and casino.
Mr. Trump said he was “not a fan” of Epstein and had banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club before 2008, when, according to a book about Mr. Trump, Epstein hit on the teenage daughter of another club member.
Prince Andrew’s name, long associated with Epstein, resurfaces in the newly disclosed documents. Witnesses in the case say they saw Andrew and his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, at Epstein’s home, as well as presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., celebrity hairstylist Frederick Fekkai and various “Noble Prize winners.”
Mr. Kennedy said he was twice a passenger on Epstein’s jet but otherwise “had no relationship with him,” and knew nothing about his crimes, he told News Nation.
Ms. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with the British royal for an estimated $16 million based on accusations Epstein and Maxwell forced her to have sex with him when she was 17 years old. He denied the charges and said he never met Ms. Giuffre.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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