Court documents that will make public the names of more than 150 people tied to a settled lawsuit involving the late financier and accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are expected to be released as soon as Wednesday, a spokesman for the federal court in New York said.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska last month ordered the materials to be released after Jan. 1. However, the judge delayed whether to release documents associated with those who have objected to the disclosure of their names until a later date, the spokesman said.
In one case, an attorney for J. Doe 107 asked Preska for clarification on Dec. 20 of whether the name of his client would be unsealed. The attorney said his client lives in a “culturally conservative country” outside of the United States and is “in fear of her name being released.” Preska asked for information supporting her claim.
Some names in the documents may already be public in the sprawling case, and they are expected to include known associates of Epstein and alleged sexual abuse victims.
But Preska has said that the names of minor victims who have not testified in the case or were not previously known to the public will remain sealed.
Epstein was facing multiple sex trafficking charges when he hanged himself in a federal jail in New York in August 2019, as a trove of incriminating material had just been unsealed in court.
A Department of Justice report last June uncovered a cascade of misconduct, negligence and errors by Metropolitan Correctional Center employees that created the conditions allowing Epstein, 66, to take his own life, and found no evidence to contradict the official conclusion that he died by suicide.
The circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death had propelled a slew of online conspiracy theories, some amplified by conservative commentators and prominent Republican officials, including former President Donald Trump.
Epstein was known to have had relationships with well-known figures and politicians, including former President Bill Clinton, who flew on the millionaire financier’s planes numerous times, flight records made public in 2019 show. Trump was also found to have flown on one of Epstein’s planes at least once, and video emerged in July 2019 of Epstein and Trump partying together at Trump’s Florida mansion in the early 1990s.
A spokesman for Clinton said in 2019 that the former president had not spoken to Epstein in over a decade and was unaware of any criminal activity at that time. That same year, Trump also said he hadn’t communicated with Epstein in 15 years and was “not a fan of his.”
The latest documents to be unsealed are part of the defamation lawsuit first filed in 2015 against British socialite and Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Giuffre alleged that Epstein sexually abused her and that Maxwell and Epstein directed her to have sex with other men from 2000 to 2002, starting when she was 17. The case, which Giuffre brought after Maxwell accused her of lying when she said Maxwell and Epstein had exploited and abused her, was eventually settled out of court in 2017.
In 2022, Giuffre also settled a high-profile lawsuit out of court against Britain’s Prince Andrew, one of the men who had been accused of having sex with her. Andrew has denied the allegations and has said he has no recollection of ever having met Giuffre.
A year after Epstein’s death, Maxwell, the daughter of late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, was arrested on charges connecting her with the recruitment of teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. At trial, Maxwell’s accusers provided graphic accounts of how they say she “groomed” them to have sex with Epstein or pressured them into massages, in which she sometimes groped them herself. She was convicted of five federal sex trafficking charges and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years behind bars.
Maxwell, now 62, is in a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, and filed an appeal of the verdict, claiming prosecutors used her as a scapegoat.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
