On social networks, the complosphere, which expected explosive revelations, was disappointed. The 950 pages of documents made public on January 3 by the New York federal justice system on the Epstein affair did not provide any “smoking gun” (irrefutable proof) detailing the links between the financier prosecuted for sexual offenses and the personalities suspected of having profited from his network of minors.
Coming three and a half years after the death of Jeffrey Epstein, an “apparent suicide”, in his Manhattan prison cell, the publication of these documents follows a decision by Judge Loretta Preska, on December 18, 2023, to lift the secrecy surrounding the names – with two exceptions – of around a hundred victims, friends and associates of the financier mentioned in the witness statements. This is part of the defamation complaint brought in 2015 by the sex offender’s main accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, against Ghislaine Maxwell, his partner. The heiress of British press magnate Robert Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years in prison in June 2022 for having recruited the minors offered to the network’s “clients”.
Most of the documents correspond to the testimony of young women victims of sexual abuse over a decade, until the indictment of Jeffrey Epstein, in Florida, in 2008, for trying to recruit a teenage girl.
On Clinton or Trump, few new elements
The names of the personalities who had been in contact with him were already widely known. That of Prince Andrew, accused by Virginia Roberts Giuffre of having forced her into sexual relations, appears several dozen times. Former President Bill Clinton, who traveled several times on Epstein’s private jet after leaving the White House, is also mentioned several dozen times.
Among the documents is the May 2016 deposition of Johanna Sjoberg, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s recruits. She claims to have heard him say that Bill Clinton likes women, preferably ” youth “. In 2019, the former president denied having knowledge of the “terrible crimes” of the financier and having profited from his plane solely for reasons linked to his charitable foundation. But his name continues to fuel conspiracy theories, which have circulated and continue to circulate about a pedophilia network allegedly used by certain Democratic dignitaries.
The critics of Bill Clinton and his Democratic allies, who impatiently awaited the publication of the documents, are therefore at their expense. The conservative daily New York Post had even announced a “bomb” of revelations. Several of Donald Trump’s allies, including his son and Marjorie Taylor Greene, muse of the Make America Great Again movement, had warned in advance against any attempt to cover up the expected revelations.
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