CRIME
Are the people who appear in the Jeffrey Epstein list of unsealed names in legal trouble?
The reveal of more than 180 persons linked to Epstein has people asking what this means about the case surrounding his accomplices
The new year has arrived and attention is refocused on the long-running saga surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased, disgraced paedophile and financier. As determined last month by US District Court judge Loretta Preska, documents that include 184 names related to Epstein’s sex trafficking ring have been revealed. Having a name listed in the document does not indicate wrongdoing.
Amongst the names are Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Alan Dershowitz.
The new reveal is seperate to the so-called “little black book” in which the names of all the people that visited Epstein on his plane can be found. The book was attempted to be destroyed but was recovered by a butler before being handed to the FBI. The scans can be found here.
Prince Andrew, Duke of York
The Duke of York, nephew of the former Queen of England, is a name included in the document. Particularly damning for the prince was his meeting with Epstein in 2009 - after Epstein had been convicted of sexually abusing children. Epstein and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite, were also pictured in the Queen’s royal estate at Balmoral.
The prince volunteered to take part in a BBC interview in an attempt to tell his side of the story. Instead, the interview was a car crash in which the prince claimed he could not sweat as well as a bizarre alibi of eating pizza at a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking because it was “an unusual thing for me to do, a very unusual thing for me to do.”
Prince Andrew settled with Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in a civil lawsuit earlier this year with no admittance of wrongdoing. Despite the reported multi-million settlement, the judge wrote that Giuffre “was a victim of sustained underage sexual abuse between 1999 and 2002.″
Bill Clinton
ABC News had reported that the individual named as “Doe 36″ was former president Bill Clinton. This name was mentioned more than 50 times in the new files.
Another image shows the former president receiving a neck massage from a girl who alleges she was a victim of Epstein. The victim, Chauntae Davies, reportedly said Clinton was a “perfect gentleman” during the trip.
In a statement released in 2019, his spokesman Angel Ureña said the former president knew nothing about Epstein’s “terrible crimes”. It also accepted Clinton had flown on Epstein’s plane four times, but all were for work purposes and the former president was not aware of any of Epstein’s dealings with underage girls.
Alan Dershowtiz
Alan Dershowitz has been associated with Jeffrey Epstein due to his legal representation. Specifically, Dershowitz provided legal counsel to Jeffrey Epstein during a 2008 plea deal negotiation, which resulted in Epstein pleading guilty to state prostitution charges in Florida. Epstein later faced federal charges related to sex trafficking of minors.
Dershowitz himself faced allegations related to his involvement with Epstein’s activities, including accusations made by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claimed that she was forced to have sexual relations with Dershowitz while she was underage. His name comes up 137 times in the document.