Aviva Fried with AFP / Photo credit: STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
A New York judge began revealing on Wednesday evening the names of contacts, acquaintances, relatives, victims or alleged accomplices of American financier Jeffrey Epstein accused of sex crimes but who committed suicide in prison in 2019 before being tried. Among these approximately 150 to 180 identities, taken from a thousand pages of court documents made public by the Manhattan federal justice system, we find former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), but without mention of the slightest illegal or reprehensible behavior on their part.
These judicial revelations were planned and expected since a December 18 order from New York judge Loretta Preska, a document which had the effect of a time bomb in the American financial capital when the courts released it on the 19 December. This legal act results from defamation proceedings against the ex-mistress and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been serving a 20-year prison sentence since 2022, and brought by an American plaintiff against the couple, Virginia Giuffre. Judge Preska had listed 180 people in December, under numbers and the pseudonym “Doe”, and ordered that their identity be “completely” revealed “14 days” at the latest after December 18 and 19, i.e. January 2 or 3 .
Epstein Network
According to the British media Daily News, which revealed the existence of this list, Virginia Giuffre’s defamation complaint against Ghislaine Maxwell dates back to 2016 and was settled the following year. But the Miami Herald newspaper then took civil action to gain access to the file and investigate the Epstein network. The fallen financier who frequented all of New York was arrested in 2019. To justify the revealing of names, including personalities already cited in the press, justice relies on the fact that certain people are easily identifiable in published interviews these last years.
In the case of Donald Trump, the New York billionaire is mentioned in the documents as an acquaintance of Esptein, but no mention is made of possible tortious or criminal behavior. As for Bill Clinton, much closer to the fallen financier and who traveled with him in the 2000s, his name is mentioned dozens of times but, again, without any clear indication of illegal facts.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were a couple in the early 1990s before becoming professional collaborators. The 61-year-old former British, French and American socialite was convicted in December 2021 in New York of sex trafficking of minors on behalf of Epstein and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years of imprisonment.
Conspiracy
The man, with powerful economic and political relays in the United States and abroad, was himself accused of having sexually assaulted and raped young girls, but his suicide by hanging in prison in New York in August 2019 extinguishes public action against him. The influence of the Epstein network fueled a number of conspiracy theories after his death about an assassination which was allegedly disguised as suicide. But New York forensics and the federal police (FBI) concluded that he had indeed killed himself and that this death “did not result from a criminal act”. And last June, the Department of Justice confirmed “the FBI’s conclusions regarding the absence of criminal acts in Epstein’s death.”
In a separate aspect of this international issue, British Prince Andrew, friend of the Maxwell-Epstein pair, sealed an amicable agreement in February 2022, for $13 million according to the Daily Telegraph, with Virginia Giuffre, 40 years old. , who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2001 when she was 17. The 63-year-old prince, who has fallen from grace, disputes these accusations.
Another close friend of Epstein, the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, charged with rape of minors, was found hanging dead in prison in Paris in February 2022. As for the international banks which had links with Epstein, the ex-Barclays boss James Staley was banned from the banking profession last October and JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank paid respectively $290 million and $75 million to victims in the spring to close their liabilities over their relationships with the financier who died at 66 years.