NEW YORK (AP) — More than 130 extra court docket recordsdata have been unsealed Friday in a lawsuit involving Jeffrey Epstein, offering but extra element in regards to the late millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of underage women and interactions with celebrities.
The newest spherical of paperwork included excerpts of testimony from individuals who labored for Epstein, copies of cellphone messages he acquired — together with one from Harvey Weinstein — and many authorized memos from legal professionals discussing who may doubtlessly have been referred to as as a witness if the lawsuit ever went to trial.
No blockbuster revelations have been obvious. Lots of the data lined materials that has been the topic of many previous information tales about Epstein and his victims. But like different paperwork beforehand made public in lawsuits associated to Epstein, they supply a window into the rarified world he inhabited.
The data are all associated to a defamation lawsuit that one in all Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, filed in 2015 towards the millionaire’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was accused by a number of girls of serving to Epstein recruit underage victims. The swimsuit was settled in 2017. Maxwell was later prosecuted and is serving a 20-year jail sentence.
Here are some takeaways from the most recent batch of launched paperwork:
The data launched Friday embrace the 2009 deposition of a former housekeeper at Epstein’s dwelling in Palm Beach, Florida, who talked about how a lot time the financier spent with Prince Andrew, the British royal who was a longtime buddy of Maxwell’s.
Juan Alessi testified that “Prince Andrew spent weeks with us” and when he visited, he would obtain day by day massages on the mansion.
Alessi stated Andrew would keep in the principle visitor bed room, which he described as “the blue room.” He recalled seeing Andrew’s former spouse, Sarah Ferguson, on one event, however added, “I don’t think she slept in there.”
Alessi additionally remembered seeing different celebrities together with Donald Trump and “a lot of queens and other famous people that I can’t remember.”
Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago membership can also be in Palm Beach, would come over to Epstein’s dwelling for dinner, Alessi stated, however he “never sat at the table,” eating as an alternative with Alessi within the kitchen. Asked whether or not Trump ever acquired massages, he stated, “No. Because he’s got his own spa.”
Alessi, who labored at Epstein’s sprawling dwelling from 1990 to 2002, beforehand testified at Maxwell’s 2021 trial that he noticed “many, many, many” younger grownup feminine guests, usually lounging topless by the pool. He additionally admitted to stealing $6,300 from Epstein’s desk.
Prince Andrew was publicly criticized when photographs emerged of him visiting Epstein in New York even after the financier was imprisoned in Florida for a intercourse crime.
Giuffre sued Andrew, accusing him of sexually abusing her when she was 17. Andrew stated he didn’t keep in mind ever assembly Giuffre. The lawsuit was settled in 2022 with out ever going to trial, however the allegations broken his public standing and led Andrew to withdraw from some royal duties.
The Associated Press usually doesn’t identify individuals who say they’re the victims of sexual abuse until they’ve come ahead publicly with their tales, as Giuffre has.
One doc unsealed Friday accommodates copies of cellphone messages Epstein acquired, handwritten by staffers, in 2004, a yr earlier than police in Palm Beach began investigating allegations that he was paying underage women for intercourse.
At the time, Epstein was getting consideration for hobnobbing with the wealthy and highly effective, providing free rides on his non-public jet to celebrities together with former President Bill Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey.
The cellphone messages, whereas largely mundane, give a small style of these associations.
“She had on the phone Mr. Harvey Weinstein,” reads one message a few missed name.
Weinstein, then a power in Hollywood, was as soon as a part of a media funding group that included Epstein.
“At the time, Epstein was seen as a wealthy power broker with access to many people of various industries and for many reasons,” stated Weinstein’s spokesman, Juda Engelmayer. “It wasn’t uncommon for people of that caliber to talk, as we see from the lists that have been coming out. There was and remains nothing more to that.”
Weinstein could be charged years later with raping and sexually assaulting girls within the leisure enterprise and is serving prolonged jail phrases after convictions in New York and Los Angeles.
Epstein additionally received a number of messages about missed calls from Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent who was near Epstein. Brunel was awaiting trial on expenses that he raped underage women when he killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022.
When Epstein was initially investigated by Palm Beach police in 2005, detectives spoke to plenty of women from an space highschool who stated they’d been paid cash to offer massages to Epstein.
Tony Figueroa, who labored as a driver for Epstein and as soon as dated Giuffre, talked in regards to the effort to recruit these women throughout his 2016 deposition.
“Jeffrey was giving us $200 apiece for every one that we brought over,” he stated. “I would get friends that I went to school with and I would take them over there and introduce them, and then I would just leave.”
He stated Maxwell would additionally name him sometimes, “asking me to get girls.”
Figueroa has informed the identical story in media interviews within the years since that deposition.
A lady who labored for Epstein, Johanna Sjoberg, testified in her 2016 deposition that Epstein requested her to carry out sexualized massages.
He additionally informed her he wished her to be the mom of his child, a request she stated he made a number of occasions.
“I don’t believe that I said flat-out no. I didn’t agree to it. I would just say, ’Oh, yeah, really? Okay,” Sjoberg testified, in response to a transcript of her deposition.
Later in her questioning, Sjoberg was requested if Maxwell ever made the identical request. Sjoberg stated no.
Maxwell was additionally requested about that in her 2016 deposition, and she or he referred to as the declare “completely rubbish.”
“I can’t testify to anything Jeffrey did or didn’t do when I am not present, but I have never asked anybody to carry a baby for me,” Maxwell stated. She added that she didn’t keep in mind having any conversations with Epstein about infants.
Sjoberg additionally testified that Epstein took her on a buying journey to Victoria’s Secret the place he “picked out everything and went into the room with me, the fitting room, which was very odd.”
Sjoberg stated that whereas within the room, Epstein joked that he’d beforehand been in there with one other lady who referred to as him “Dad.”
Sjoberg, like Giuffre, has beforehand gone public together with her story in media interviews.
The authorized storm that Epstein and Maxwell have been dealing with is captured effectively in a Jan. 11, 2015, electronic mail by her legal professional Philip Barden, who referred to Maxwell as “G,” and to Epstein as “JE.”
He urged a robust public response to Giuffre’s claims as a result of silence was “reputational suicide.”
“Now it is reported that G engaged in direct abuse — as I feared would happen. Next reports to the authorities will be made,” Barden wrote in a message to a person whose identify was blacked out, with Maxwell copied on the missive.
“It is necessary from a litigation, investigatory and reputational reason to issue a cogent denial. I can see why JE doesn’t want this as it may not suit him but he is already toast,” he added.
Four years later Epstein could be useless by suicide, present in a jail cell after he was arrested in July 2019 on intercourse trafficking expenses. It could be two extra years earlier than a jury in New York agreed that Maxwell helped Epstein recruit and groom teenage women for sexual abuse and typically joined within the abuse.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”