Who was Jeffrey Epstein and what documents linked to his sex scandal reveal?

A Federal court in New York has released hundreds of pages of sealed records from a lawsuit involving suspected sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday. The documents contain details including the names of former US president Bill Clinton, and Britain’s Prince Andrew among others. The latest disclosure, which is part ofa defamation proceeding between Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein’s former girlfriend), sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison, and a plaintiff against the duo, Virginia Giuffre, also included emails, transcripts of depositions, and legal filings. The judge who made the call wrote in December that she was ordering the records released because much of the information within them is already public. The first 40 documents, of an expected 250 ordered unsealed, largely mention figures whose names were already known, including high-profile friends of Epstein’s and victims who have spoken publicly. Misinformation regarding the documents’ contents spread widely on social media prior to their release. Due to a joke made by New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday, users incorrectly speculated that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might surface. In a reaction on X, Kimmel stated that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.” But why do these documents matter. Here’s a closer look. Who is Jeffery Epstein? A millionaire known for associating with celebrities, politicians, billionaires and academic stars, Epstein was initially arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. Dozens of other underage girls described similar sexual abuse, but prosecutors ultimately allowed the financier to plead guilty in 2008 to a charge involving a single victim. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program. Some famous acquaintances abandoned Epstein after his conviction, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but many did not. Epstein continued to mingle with the rich and famous for another decade, often through philanthropic work. [caption id=“attachment_13575052” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Audrey Strauss, acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference, in New York. File image/AP[/caption] Reporting by the Miami Herald renewed interest in the scandal, and federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking. He killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. The US attorney in Manhattan then prosecuted Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, for helping recruit his underage victims. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison term. What are these records about? The documents being unsealed are part of a lawsuit filed against Maxwell in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre . She is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico. Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein — a job that involved performing sexual acts. Giuffre also claimed she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit, most famously with Prince Andrew . All of those men said her accounts were fabricated. She settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre withdrew an accusation she had made against Epstein’s former attorney, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she " may have made a mistake " in identifying him as an abuser. Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the Miami Herald went to court to access court papers initially filed under seal, including transcripts of interviews the lawyers did with potential witnesses. About 2,000 pages were unsealed by a court in 2019. Additional documents were released in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The batch currently being released contains around 250 records that sections that were blacked out or were sealed entirely because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose names had come up during the legal battle but weren’t complicit in his crimes. Only around 40 of those documents were made public Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days. What can we expect to see? US District Judge Loretta A Preska, who evaluated the documents to decide what should be unsealed, said in her December order that she was ordering the records released because much of the information within them is already public. Some records have been released, either in part or in full, in other court cases. The people named in the records include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his staff who told their stories to tabloid newspapers, people who served as witnesses at Maxwell’s trial, people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but aren’t accused of anything salacious, and people who investigated Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist and a detective. [caption id=“attachment_13575072” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a sexual assault victim, speaks in New York. File image/AP[/caption] There are also boldface names of public figures known to have associated with Epstein over the years, but whose relationships with him have already been well documented elsewhere, the judge said. One of them is Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls when he killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse. His name was peppered throughout the documents released Wednesday. Clinton and Trump both factor in the court file, partly because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell’s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein. One story quoted her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Trump. Giuffre said neither of those things actually happened. She hasn’t accused either former president of wrongdoing. The judge said a handful of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who were sexually abused. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Giuffre has done. When will the rest of the documents be made public? The judge hasn’t set a target for when all of the documents should be made public, but more documents are expected to come in the next few days. With inputs from AP