A highly anticipated trove of secret court files related to Jeffrey Epstein was unsealed on Wednesday, shedding more light on the sex-trafficker’s victims and famous colleagues.
More than 150 people—including former President Bill Clinton and his aide Doug Band—are named in the documents that were previously filed under seal as part of a lawsuit that Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre brought against his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The confidential materials have been unsealed on a rolling basis since 2019 after the Miami Herald sued to make them public. Prior record dumps revealed a slew of accusations against powerful men including Britain’s Prince Andrew, the late former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, billionaire Glenn Dubin, and the late model scout Jean-Luc Brunel. (All the men named by the lawsuit have denied involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking.)
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Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for Giuffre, said “the world has been on watch” since the summer of 2019, when Epstein was arrested and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the release of the records related to his sex ring.
“The public has wondered and many have rightly demanded to know how Epstein operated his vast, global sex trafficking enterprise and got away with it for decades,” McCawley said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Questions of who enabled and facilitated him and who participated in an operation that resulted in unspeakable harm and devastation to the lives of countless girls and young women quickly surfaced.”
While many questions still haven’t been answered, she added, “The public interest must still be served in learning more about the scale and scope of Epstein's racket to further the important goal of shutting down sex trafficking wherever it exists and holding more to account. The unsealing of these documents gets us closer to that goal.”
While the documents didn’t unearth any new names of Epstein’s alleged enablers or drop any fresh bombshell accusations, they paint a broader picture of his and Maxwell’s world and the celebrities they paid court to at the sex offender’s lavish mansions. Many revelations arrive in the form of a never-before-seen deposition from Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, who said she worked for Epstein from 2001 to 2006. The new details revolve around dinners with magician David Copperfield, travels with ex-president Bill Clinton—and at least one visit to Donald Trump’s casino in Atlantic City.
Here are the most prominent among Epstein’s friends and acquaintances named in the newly unsealed documents:
Trump and Epstein knew each other socially in Palm Beach in the 1990s—they reportedly hung out with 28 girls at a Mar-a-Lago “calendar girl” party in ’92—until they had what Trump described as a “falling out,” possibly over real estate. (Trump later claimed he was “not a fan.”) Epstein’s pilot even testified that The Donald often flew on Epstein’s private jet—at least seven times, according to flight logs.
Epstein’s accusers also recalled that the men were close. In a 2016 deposition, a transcript of which was unsealed for the first time on Wednesday night, Sjoberg remembered flying on Epstein’s private jet from Palm Beach to Atlantic City. During a stop there for a “few hours” amid bad weather, Sjoberg talked about heading to one of Trump’s casinos, which were still going strong at the time.
“Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to—I don’t recall the name of the casino, but—we’ll go to the casino,” she said she remembered Epstein saying.
Epstein and Donald, palling around at Mar-a-Lago in 1997.
Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty ImagesBut Virginia Giuffre, who was flying with them, was too young to get in “because of an ID issue,” Sjoberg testified. “So she and I did not gamble.”
Despite their personal break-up, Epstein was still close to Trump’s inner circle for years. In January 2007, the pedophile financier referred the former head of Trump’s hotel and casino empire to JPMorgan as a potential client. A decade later, the moneyman also tried to suck up to Trump’s allies, including megadonor Peter Thiel, ahead of the 2016 election. And Epstein’s brother maintains the two men were “good friends” and “each other’s wingmen.” Another one of Epstein’s victims concurred, claiming in an anonymous lawsuit that in the mid-’90s, Epstein showed her off as a 14-year-old to the Mar-a-Lago magnate, with Trump allegedly chuckling when Epstein asked him, “This is a good one, right?”
Despite the fact that Bill Clinton was photographed receiving a massage from an Epstein accuser during one of his round-the-world trips with the perverted moneyman, President No. 42 says nothing untoward ever happened during his time with Epstein. The two men were first introduced in the early ’90s and Epstein regularly frequented the White House as Clinton’s guest. (He also brought Maxwell with him.) And Jeffrey allegedly knew of Clinton’s preferences. Asked if Epstein talked to her about Clinton, Sjoberg testified, “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”
Lawyers for Giuffre wanted to take Clinton’s deposition as part of her case, writing in one pleading that he was a “key person who can provide information about his close relationship with Defendant and Mr. Epstein and disapprove Ms. Maxwell’s claims.”
In her unpublished memoir quoted in court papers, Giuffre says Clinton was an honored guest at Epstein’s U.S. Virgin Islands compound (a claim he denies). “The next big dinner party on the island had another significant guest appearance being the one and only, Bill Clinton,” Giuffre wrote. “He is the only president in the world to be dismissed from his role as a world leader because he was caught with his trousers around his ankles and had the stain to prove it. Publicly humiliating his wife and himself he retired from his title but not from his lifestyle.”
“This wasn’t a big party as such, only a few of us eating at the diner table,” Giuffre continued. “There was Jeffrey at the head of it all, as always. On the left side was Emmy, Ghislaine and I sitting across the table from us was Bill with two lovely girls who were visiting from New York. Bill’s wife, Hillary’s absence from the night made it easy for his apparent provocative cheeky side to come out.”
“Teasing the girls on either side of him with playful pokes and brassy comments, there was no modesty between any of them. We all finished our meals and scattered in our own different directions.”
The defense, however, presented a report from former FBI Director Louis Freeh which concluded Clinton never traveled to Little St. James. Maxwell’s team also poked holes in a 2011 Daily Mail article where Giuffre claimed the socialite flew Clinton to the island in a black helicopter. In one legal memorandum, her attorneys argued that Giuffre “now even denies telling” the Mail reporter “that she ever witnessed Ms. Maxwell flying President Clinton or his Secret Service anywhere.” (Giuffre, in a deposition, testified that Maxwell told her she flew Clinton in. “And Ghislaine likes to talk a lot of stuff that sounds fantastical,” Giuffre said.)
Meanwhile, Maxwell testified in a deposition that “allegations that Clinton had a meal on Jeffrey’s island is 100 percent false,” though the former president likely ate on Epstein’s plane.
In her newly unsealed deposition, Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg claimed she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach home. She said she did not give the musician a massage, as she had often done for Epstein. Brad Edwards, a lawyer who spent years litigating against Epstein and his associates, previously detailed Jackson’s visit in his 2020 book.
“For a young woman like Johanna, the fact that there were stars who were friends with Jeffrey and Ghislaine was an attractive bonus of the job,” Edwards wrote, adding, “Even the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, had been enough of an Epstein acquaintance to pay him a visit in Palm Beach while Johanna was working there.”
Magician David Copperfield was another regular visitor to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, according to Edwards’ book. The illusionist was subpoenaed in 2009 by Edwards in relation to Epstein’s alleged crimes but he never was deposed. Still, Edwards notes that the two men were said to have visited each other on their respective private Caribbean islands.
Sjoberg, under questioning in 2016 by McCawley, revealed she’d met Copperfield at Epstein’s house, the new documents reveal. One of Epstein’s employees had called Sjoberg and said Copperfield would be at the moneyman’s mansion, then asked if she would like to join for dinner, according to her testimony.
“And what happened at that dinner, if anything?” McCawley asked. “He did some magic tricks,” Sjoberg said.
Sjoberg also said Copperfield asked if she was aware that “girls were getting paid to find other girls,” but that the magician didn’t specify whether the girls in question were underage.
Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre holds up a picture of herself as a young girl.
Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesEpstein liked to brag about stars like Cate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Bruce Willis—though the documents don’t provide any evidence that the celebrities in question ever knew him. In her deposition, Sjoberg testified that Epstein chatted about taking calls with the movie stars.
When Maxwell’s attorney asked her, “I saw one press report that said you had met Cate Blanchett or Leonardo DiCaprio?” Sjoberg replied, “I did not meet them, no … When I spoke about them, it was when I was massaging [Epstein], and he would get off—he would be on the phone a lot at that time, and one time he said, ‘Oh, that was Leonardo,’ or, ‘That was Cate Blanchett,’ or Bruce Willis. That kind of thing.”
This was Epstein “name-dropping,” Sjoberg said, adding that she would have remembered meeting celebrities of that level.
“Did you meet Cameron Diaz?” Menninger followed up. “No,” responded Sjoberg. “Bill Clinton?”
“No.”
“Did you see Bill Clinton on the island?” asked Menninger. “No,” the young woman replied.
Prince Andrew has faced a royal shellacking for his association with the creepy financier. He had to pay Giuffre a reported $14 million to settle her salacious accusations against him (he claims all the allegations are false, never mind the picture of the two of them together when she was a teen)—and friends say he “rues the day” he paid up. It’s clear he also probably rues his long and close friendship with Maxwell and Epstein, who allegedly boasted that the Windsor prince was his “useful idiot.”
A 2015 email from Maxwell to her PR person and lawyer reveals she was also concerned about facing questions about the Duke of York. As Giuffre’s claims made media fodder, Maxwell told her reps she wanted to release a statement and warned that ones “that don’t address all just lead to more questions..what is my relationship to clinton ? Andrew on and on.”
While questioned under oath in a deposition, Maxwell couldn’t recall whether she introduced Sjoberg to the prince or whether he was present for a New York party she attended, or whether she acquainted Andrew and Giuffre in London. She also couldn’t answer whether she discussed Giuffre’s claims with Andrew—or anything about the infamous puppet groping incident.
Oh look, it’s Melania, Prince Andrew, and Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 2000. Is that Gwendolyn Beck? Yes, it is.
Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty ImagesBut Sjoberg described that encounter in her own testimony. Around Easter of 2001, she stayed at Epstein’s New York mansion with Maxwell, Andrew, and Giuffre.
“At one point, Ghislaine told me to come upstairs, and we went into a closet and pulled out the puppet, the caricature of Prince Andrew, and brought it down,” Sjoberg testified. “And there was a little tag on the puppet that said ‘Prince Andrew’ on it, and that’s when I knew who he was.”
“It looked like him,” Sjoberg added. “And she brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC. And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch. They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”
Sjoberg didn't recall who took the photo and never saw it after the gathering.
The longtime former Clinton aide frequently joined the ex-president’s travels with Epstein and Maxwell to Africa, Asia, and beyond. As The Daily Beast reported, Band was photographed with their crew during a 2002 stop in Singapore.
But Band claimed in a Vanity Fair interview that he’d tried cutting Epstein and Maxwell from Clinton’s circle after their high-profile trip to Africa with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. Before he left Clintonworld, Band told Clinton’s office to ban Maxwell—who’d become particularly close to Chelsea Clinton—from the family’s future events.
In her deposition, Maxwell was asked about Band: “Did you ever have a relationship with him?”
“We are talking about adult consensual relationships, it’s off the record,” Maxwell answered, before asking the lawyer to “define relationship.”
“I was friends with Doug but you are suggesting something more so I want to be clear what you are actually asking me,” Maxwell said.
The heiress was unable to answer other questions, including whether she could recall Epstein and Clinton being friendly towards each other and the purpose of a trip to Thailand with Epstein and the former president.
The billionaire and his wife, former Miss Sweden Eva Andersson-Dubin—who was also once Epstein’s girlfriend—have repeatedly come up in legal filings. Virginia Giuffre claimed in a deposition that Maxwell instructed her to “massage” Glenn Dubin, a directive that “means sex,” she said. Maxwell, in a separate deposition, denied that accusation.
The Dubins’ reputations have taken a major hit in the wake of Epstein’s demise. After Epstein was convicted in 2008, they helped him rehabilitate his image and maintain his social standing. They even invited the disgraced financier to join them for Thanksgiving; Eva told Epstein’s probation officer that she was “100% comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein around my children.”
One of the Dubins’ former employees, Rinaldo Rizzo, claimed in a 2016 deposition that he spoke with a 15-year-old Swedish girl who was “shaking uncontrollably” in 2005 while in the Dubins’ kitchen. The girl alleged that she had been “pressured to have sex” while on Epstein’s private island. As The Daily Beast previously reported, Rizzo paused his questioning once Eva Dubin entered the room.
“Eva comes in and tells [the girl] that she will be working for Eva in the city,” he said. “As a nanny.”
Eva Dubin, who dated Epstein intermittently in the 1980s and early 1990s, previously denied allegations she had participated in “orgies with teen girls.” Both she and her husband have insisted they did nothing wrong and said they were not aware of Epstein’s “vile and unspeakable conduct.”
The billionaire founder of L Brands—whose subsidiaries have included Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and other major labels—had a bizarrely close relationship with Epstein, even granting him power of attorney in 1991. Epstein was able to use that authority to “hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties and borrow money — all on Mr. Wexner’s behalf,” as The New York Times previously reported.
Wexner’s name came up in the legal filings as part of Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition, in which she denied that she had provided Virginia Giuffre with “an outfit of a sexual nature to wear” for Wexner.
Wexner, who stepped away from L Brands in 2020, has not fully explained his close ties to the deceased sex offender. In addition to granting power of attorney, he sold Epstein properties and a jet at sweetheart prices, and he allegedly maintained a relationship with Epstein for many months after he was arrested in 2006 and accused of underage prostitution.
Wexner infamously gushed about Epstein to Vanity Fair in 2003, calling him “very smart with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards,” adding, “he is always a most loyal friend.” (He later said Epstein took advantage of him and that he was deeply “embarrassed” by their association.)
Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, who said she was assaulted by Maxwell and Epstein while staying on Wexner’s estate in the 1990s, said she held the billionaire responsible for the alleged incident because it happened on his property. As The Daily Beast previously detailed, she further claimed that his security officers “held her against her will at the property…for 12 hours after her alleged assault.” Wexner has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s assault.
High-profile defense attorney and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz appears in portions of 2016 deposition testimony by Epstein house manager Juan Alessi, adding more fodder to what was already known about his interactions with the disgraced financier and onetime client.
Alessi testified under oath that Dershowitz was at Epstein’s Florida mansion “pretty often,” and enjoyed massages while there. Another household employee, Alfredo Rodriguez, backed up Alessi’s account, testifying that Dershowitz “was present alone at the home of Epstein, without his family, in the presence of young girls,” according to one of the documents. (Dershowitz has denied any contact with women or girls in Epstein’s orbit.)
Epstein, along with a trio of alleged co-conspirators—Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, and Adrianna Mucinska—invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent when confronted with questions about Dershowitz getting massaged by underage girls, the documents say.
Epstein didn’t go to Harvard but he still liked to wear the Crimson sweatshirt when chatting with his lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty ImagesGiuffre was not the only Epstein accuser to name Dershowitz as an alleged abuser. A young woman named Sarah Ransome also claimed she was pressured into sexual service for the professor. Dershowitz says she, too, is lying: he told the Beast in 2022, “she made it all up.”
Meanwhile, a little over a year ago, Giuffre settled her defamation suit against Dershowitz and he dropped his countersuit against her. The lawyer crowed he was “exonerated” with his name cleared, while Epstein’s accuser insisted to the Beast, “I did not, and would never, ‘exonerate’ Mr. Dershowitz.”
Hairdresser-to-the-stars Frederick Fekkai has distanced himself from Epstein in the past, saying through a spokesperson that the two had “limited acquaintance” and that the stylist found Epstein’s conduct “deplorable.” However, his name appeared in Epstein’s “black book” of contacts, as well as in flight logs showing at least two trips on Epstein’s plane. And multiple employees of the famous coiffeur told the Beast that Epstein would bring girls into Fekkai’s salon—even after his 2008 conviction—where he would pay for their haircuts and where they sat on the sex-trafficker’s lap and stroked his hair.
Fekkai’s name appears again in the newly unredacted documents, during Sjoberg’s deposition in 2016. “I heard him call someone, and say, Fekkai is in Hawaii,” Sjoberg testified. “Can we find some girls for him?”
“And what was your reaction to that?” one of the lawyers asked. “Well, I was massaging and I didn't have a reaction,” Sjoberg said. “I tried to remain reactionless the whole five years.”
The now-deceased ex-governor of New Mexico was a beneficiary of Epstein’s largesse in 2006, with his campaign receiving $50,000 from the pedophile. A year later, Epstein’s lawyers also donated thousands to the guv. Why all that money to a politician in New Mexico? Well, Epstein owned a ranch down there, one which he allegedly intended to serve as a creepy baby factory to churn out his own clones and flood the human race with his DNA. Two sisters who were among Epstein’s earliest accusers also say he assaulted them at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch near the town of Stanley. (Richardson visited the Zorro ranch at least once, but denied any knowledge of Epstein’s heinous crimes.)
During her 2016 deposition, Sjoberg spoke of a planned get-together with Richardson while traveling with Epstein, but that she didn’t recall many specifics.
“I want to say that he was supposed to come to dinner when we were in New Mexico,” Sjoberg testified. I don’t know if I met him. I believe that he and Ghislaine had dinner separate from myself.”
