The list was eagerly awaited, its content does not seem to live up to the crazy theories that have been circulating since the announcement of its publication. One hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty names of contacts, acquaintances, relatives, victims and alleged accomplices of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sexual exploitation of minors, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 before being judged, were revealed Wednesday evening, January 3, by a New York judge.
Among these dozens of identities – taken from a thousand pages of court documents made public by Manhattan federal justice – we find former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), but the documents do not reveal the slightest illegal or reprehensible behavior on their part.
These legal revelations result from defamation proceedings against Ghislaine Maxwell, a 62-year-old British, French and American woman. The ex-mistress and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in December 2021 in New York of sex trafficking of minors on behalf of Epstein and sentenced in June 2022 to twenty years of imprisonment. The lawsuit was brought by an American plaintiff, Virginia Giuffre.
As part of this case, New York judge Loretta Preska listed the names of one hundred and eighty people in December, under numbers and the pseudonym “Doe,” and ordered that their identities be “completely” revealed “for fourteen days » at the latest after December 18 and 19, i.e. January 2 or 3. This document had the effect of a time bomb in the American financial capital, and on social networks.
Easily identifiable people
According to the British media Daily Mail, 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.
However, the Miami Herald newspaper then took civil action to gain access to the file and investigate Mr. Epstein’s network. The fallen financier who frequented All-New York was arrested in 2019.
To justify the disclosure of names, justice relies on the fact that certain people were easily identifiable in interviews published in recent years. New York billionaire Donald Trump is mentioned in the documents as an acquaintance of Mr. Epstein, but no mention is made of any possible tortious or criminal behavior on his part.
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 clear evidence of illegal facts.
Conspiracy theories
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were a couple in the early 1990s before becoming professional collaborators. The man, with powerful economic and political relays in the United States and abroad, was accused of having sexually assaulted and raped young girls, but his suicide by hanging, in prison in New York in August 2019, extinguished public action against him.
The influence of Jeffrey Epstein’s network fueled a number of conspiracy theories after his death about an assassination that was disguised as suicide, but New York forensics and the federal police (FBI) concluded that he had died. caused death and that this “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.”