Tag: Loretta Preska

• The names of more than 170 Jeffrey Epstein associates were just unsealed.

• Powerful associates like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Glenn Dubin, and Jean Luc Brunel are in the documents.

• The list of names also include many of Epstein’s victims.

A federal judge in New York has unsealed the identities of about 170 associates of Jeffrey Epstein as part of a long-running lawsuit between one of his accusers and his sex-trafficking partner Ghislaine Maxwell.

Former President Bill Clinton is perhaps the biggest name disclosed in the documents. He was previously identified as “Doe 36” and was named in dozens of redacted court filings. He didn’t object to unsealing the documents naming him, and the documents aren’t expected to level any new accusations of wrongdoing against him. In one newly unsealed document, an excerpt of a deposition given by Maxwell, Maxwell says that she didn’t know how many times Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet but that she’s “sure” he had a meal while flying on it.

The documents also bring fresh scrutiny to Prince Andrew, a longtime friend of Epstein who said he cut ties with him in 2010. Another Doe whose name is expected to be unredacted is Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s victims who previously said the prince fondled her at his Manhattan mansion.

Many on social media and cable news have speculated that the list contains a comprehensive secret cache of the dead pedophile’s friends — and perhaps descriptions of their lurid acts — but the reality is more complicated.

The names include some powerful people tied to Epstein. But the list also includes the identities of some of his victims, household staff, and other people whose names incidentally came up in the course of a long-running court case between Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Maxwell. In court documents, these people were previously identified as a John or Jane Doe.

One of the Does, for example, previously identified as “J. Doe 005” in court documents, is Carolyn Andriano. Andriano testified against Maxwell at her criminal trial, describing in excruciating detail how she trafficked her to Epstein for sex beginning when she was 14 years old. She said in court that Epstein engaged in sexual activity with her more than 100 times and that he said she was “too old” for him after she turned 18.

Andriano testified using only her first name but gave her full name in an interview with the Daily Mail after the trial. The judge who ordered her name unsealed cited that interview as a reason to now make her name public in the earlier court documents. Andriano, a 36-year-old mother of five, died of an apparent overdose in May, The Daily Beast previously reported.

Another previously sealed name, “Doe 185,” is Courtney Wild. She led a legal battle to invalidate Epstein’s controversial 2007 plea deal with federal prosecutors and has given multiple media interviews about her experience with Epstein.

Two other Does — 63 and 64 — are Annie and Maria Farmer, two sisters who have accused Epstein of sexual abuse. Annie Farmer testified at Maxwell’s trial, and both have given media interviews about their experience.

Out of the more than 170 anonymous Does whose names were scheduled to be unsealed Wednesday, two received extensions allowing them to continue fighting in court to remain anonymous.

One of them, Doe 107, is also one of Epstein’s victims, whose lawyer has argued in court filings that she should be able to keep her privacy. The identity of the other, Doe 110, is not yet clear.

We’ve seen a lot of these records before

Epstein died in a Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019. Maxwell, one of his ex-girlfriends, was found guilty at trial in late 2021 of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex and sexually abusing some of them herself. She’s serving a 20-year prison sentence in Tallahassee, Florida.

Before the criminal charges, Giuffre brought civil lawsuits against both of them, accusing them of trafficking her. Epstein settled her lawsuit against him in 2009 for $500,000.

The lawsuit against Maxwell, brought later, was settled in 2017, but not after a pitched court battle that included numerous depositions and a discovery process that dredged up emails, flight manifests, news articles, and other records related to Epstein, Maxwell, and Giuffre.

Since the settlement, the civil case has experienced a long afterlife as various parties have sought to unseal the records.

Alan Dershowitz has sought to get numerous filings unsealed, arguing they would disprove Giuffre’s misconduct accusations against him as well (the two settled a large number of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits against each other and their lawyers in 2022, with Giuffre stating she “may have made a mistake” saying Epstein trafficked her to Dershowitz).

The Miami Herald litigated to unseal documents, some of which were used for its explosive series about how Epstein negotiated a light plea deal on misconduct accusations around 2007 with prosecutors in Florida. The right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Michael Cernovich also hired a lawyer to try to unseal documents that he had posted on social media.

US District Judge Robert Sweet, who originally oversaw Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell, died in 2019, leaving the task of unsealing documents to US District Judge Loretta Preska, who took over the docket.

The process has been a yearslong slog. Preska has weighed different priorities, including the public’s presumption of access to court documents versus the privacy interests of people whose names have come up in litigation.

In December, for example, she ruled that Andriano, Wild, and the Farmer sisters waived any rights to privacy after giving media interviews.

During the efforts to unseal this batch of records, Preska gave the Does a January 1 deadline to raise any new objections to unsealing their identities. Now that that deadline has passed, lawyers for Giuffre and Maxwell have been ordered to confer and then publish unsealed versions of the documents on the court docket.

The Epstein Doe names include some powerful people

Many documents in the Giuffre v. Maxwell lawsuit have been unredacted in different places at different times.

The result is that some documents — which can be as benign as an already-public Daily Mail article about Epstein’s former friend Prince Andrew or as explosive as one of Maxwell’s deposition transcripts — form a sort of puzzle where journalists can put together more complete versions by looking at unredacted portions in different places on the court docket.

That means that journalists have been able to figure out the identities of many Does even before they were officially unsealed.

As Business Insider previously reported, “Doe 183” — whose lawyer fought vociferously in secret court filings to keep his identity under wraps — was connected to Les Wexner, the billionaire former L Brands CEO who gave Epstein billions of dollars in the 1990s and 2000s.

(Wexner has said he wasn’t aware of Epstein’s misdeeds and cut off ties with him when he was convicted of soliciting girls for prostitution in 2007.)

Many of the Doe parties turned out to be victims. In a previous round of unsealing, Preska disclosed that two of them were Emmy Taylor and Sarah Ransome. It didn’t make sense for their identities to remain private, Preska said, because Taylor has filed lawsuits related to her status as an Epstein victim, and Ransome has written a book about her experience being trafficked by Epstein.

The current unsealing round comes after Preska announced on December 18 that she would unseal the largest batch yet, listing about 50 pages of Does going up to “Doe 187.” Since the identities of some of those Does have been previously made public — including “Doe 183” — that left about 170 Does remaining to name.

Preska said she’d give 14 days from her December 18 ruling to allow any Does to come forward and contest the unsealings. Two have since come forward. A lawyer for Doe 107 said she lives in “a culturally conservative country and lives in fear of her name being released.” Preska has given her until January 22 to provide additional documentation to bolster that argument for privacy.

Another anonymous person, identified as Doe 110, also asked for an extension to file court documents requesting privacy. Preska said Wednesday that she would rule on that “in due course.” It isn’t clear whether Doe 110 is also a victim or someone else affiliated with Epstein.

Among the other unsealed names is Dershowitz (originally “Doe 24”), who has said for years that documents related to him should be made public.

As the Daily Mail previously reported, “Doe 162” was identifiable as Johanna Sjoberg, who gave interviews that corroborated some of Giuffre’s claims about Prince Andrew and said the British royal fondled both of them at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2001. Prince Andrew has denied the allegations and settled a civil sexual misconduct lawsuit Giuffre brought against him in 2022.

The Miami Herald previously reported that powerful people whose names would be unsealed included Glenn Dubin, the hedge fund executive with a close relationship to Epstein (his wife testified in Maxwell’s defense at her trial), and Jean-Luc Brunel, the modeling agent who also killed himself in jail, in France, before his rape trial.

Some of the Does appear to be linked to Epstein’s powerful associates but do not necessarily mean they were implicated in wrongdoing.

“Doe 8,” for example is Doug Band, a former aide for Bill Clinton. Preska pointed out that he gave a long interview with Vanity Fair about his interactions with Epstein. In the interview, Band said that he sought to push Epstein out of Clinton’s orbit but that Clinton continued to spend time with him anyway.

Read the original article on Business Insider