After years of back-and-forth between lawyers for alleged Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, a judge allowed documents from a 2015 civil case to be unsealed on Thursday night. Giuffre had sued Maxwell for defamation after Maxwell said her allegations of Epstein’s sexual abuse were false, and Maxwell’s depositions in the suit are the source of the current perjury charges against her following her arrest earlier this month. Maxwell has denied those charges as well as charges of trafficking girls for Epstein’s abuse, and is currently being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
The documents in question had been sealed following a 2017 settlement, but the Miami Herald and its reporter Julie K. Brown fought for the release of the records in a lawsuit. Maxwell had filed multiple challenges about the extent of proposed redactions to the files, prompting U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska to write on Thursday, “The court is troubled—but not surprised—that Ms. Maxwell has yet again sought to muddy the waters as the clock ticks closer to midnight.”
A court allowed for the release of much of the material from the suit in August 2019, including evidence that detailed Maxwell’s alleged procurement of girls for Epstein and other men. The identities of some of those men remain anonymous due to the continued redactions in the newly unsealed documents, but previously identified men such as Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew appear again. (Each man has denied any wrongdoing.) The documents also add more disturbing details to the picture of how Maxwell and Epstein allegedly operated their sex trafficking ring. In one instance, they appear to contradict Maxwell’s claim during her efforts to be granted bail that she hadn’t been in touch with Epstein in over a decade.
In one January 2015 email released on Thursday, Epstein wrote to Maxwell what seems to be the draft of a statement for her to make. “Since JE was charged in 2007 for solicitation of a prostitute I have been the target of outright lies, innuendo, slander, defamation and salacious gossip and harassment,” he wrote.
In a separate email, this one in his own voice, he gave her advice: “You have done nothing wrong and i woudl urge you to start acting like it. go outside, head high, not as an esacping convict. go to parties. deal with it.. i had lisa svenson the swedish ocean ambassador yesteady she said no one on her ocean panel takes this stuff seriously and you would be welcoe to the ocean conferenec water conference etc.”
Another document shows that in 2011, Giuffre told her attorneys Jack Scarola and Brad Edwards in a deposition about seeing Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island. When asked whether she’d heard Epstein say, “Bill Clinton owes me favors,” she responded, “Yes. I do. It was a laugh though. He would laugh it off.” (Giuffre has not accused Clinton of wrongdoing.)
Giuffre described the first time Epstein abused her. “So then Ghislaine told me that she wanted me to undress and began to take off my shirt and skirt, my white uniform from Mar-a-Lago,” Giuffre testified. “She also took off her shirt and got undressed, and so I was there with just my undies on, and she was completely bare.”
Despite the new documents, questions remain about which other men were involved in Epstein’s circle of abuse. Maxwell is still appealing the release of two other depositions, and seems to have largely succeeded in having key names redacted from Thursday night’s batch. In 2015 she wrote to Epstein, “I would appreciate it if shelley would come out and say she was your g’friend—I think she was from end 99 to 2002.”
“Ok, with me,” Epstein replied, but it’s not clear who “shelley” is referring to.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam
— Did Meghan and Harry Make Their Royal Exit to Tell the Truth About the Commonwealth?
— How Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell’s Friendship Became a Scandal
— The Stranger-Than-Fiction Secret History of Prog-Rock Icon Rick Wakeman
— Everyone Is Homeschooling. Not Everyone Is Doing It Like the Ultrarich.
— How Quarantine Introduced the Real Camilla to the World
— From the Archive: The Trouble With Prince Andrew
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss a story.