NEW YORK (AP) – The release of dozens of previously sealed court documents from the case involving Jeffrey Epstein may disappoint online sleuths who were expecting explosive new information.
The 40 documents released late Wednesday largely mention figures whose names are already known, including high-ranking friends of Epstein and victims who have spoken publicly. In fact, the judge who called last month to release the information said he was doing so largely because much of it was already public.
Still, the plan to release the documents caused rumours of a list of “clients” or “co-conspirators,” and misinformation about their contents spread on social media.
Users mistakenly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear, prompted by a joke New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”
Kimmel said in response to X that he had never met Epstein and that “Rogers’ reckless words put my family in danger.”
The documents unsealed Wednesday are the latest of thousands previously released in court cases involving Epstein. About 250 more are expected to be released in the future.
Here’s what we know about the documents released so far:
WHO IS JEFFREY EPSTEIN?
A millionaire known for his connections to celebrities, politicians, billionaires and academic stars, Epstein became the subject of a police investigation in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. He was arrested in 2006.
Dozens of other minor girls described similar sexual abuse, but prosecutors eventually allowed the financier to plead guilty in 2008 on a charge involving one victim. He served 13 months in a prison work release program.
Some famous acquaintances abandoned Epstein after his conviction, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but many did not. Epstein continued to mix with the rich and famous for another decade, often through philanthropic work.
The Miami Herald reports renewed interest in the scandal, and federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking. He committed suicide in prison pending trial.
The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan then prosecuted Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell for helping recruit his underage victims. She was sentenced in 2021 and is serving 20 years in prison.
WHAT ARE THESE ENTRIES ABOUT?
The leaked documents are part of a 2015 lawsuit filed against Maxwell by one of Epstein’s victims. Virginia Giuffre. She is one of dozens of women who have sued Epstein, alleging he abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands and New Mexico.
Giuffre said that the summer she turned 17, she was lured from working as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become Epstein’s “masseuse,” a job that involved performing sexual acts.
Giuffre also claims she was coerced into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and billionaire Glenn Dubin, among others. All these men said her accounts were fabricated.
Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022. That same year, Giuffre dropped the accusation she had brought against Epstein’s former lawyer, law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying that “ he may have made a mistake ” in identifying him as an abuser.
Giuffre’s case against Maxwell was settled in 2017, but the Miami Herald went to court to gain access to court documents originally filed under seal, including transcripts of interviews the attorneys conducted with potential witnesses.
About 2,000 pages were unsealed by a court in 2019. Additional documents were released in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The batch being released now contains about 250 records with sections that have been blacked out or sealed entirely due to concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and others whose names have come out during the legal battle but not were accomplices in his crimes.
Only about 40 of those documents were made public on Wednesday. More will be released in the coming days.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE?
U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, who reviewed the documents to decide what should be unsealed, said in her December order that she ordered the records released because much of the information in them is already public.
Some records were released, in part or in whole, in other court cases.
The people named in the tapes include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his team who told their stories to tabloids, people who served as witnesses at Maxwell’s trial, people who were mentioned in passing during testimony, but have not been charged with anything untoward, and people who investigated Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist and a police detective.
There are also names in bold of public figures who are known to have been associated with Epstein over the years, but whose connections to him are already well documented elsewhere, the judge said.
One of them is Jean-Luc Brunel, a French fashion agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on charges of raping underage girls when committed suicide in a Paris prison in 2022 Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
His name was prominent in the documents released Wednesday.
Both Clinton and Trump are involved in the court filing, in part because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell’s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper stories about her time with Epstein. One story quoted her as saying she rode in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Trump. Giuffre said none of these things actually happened. She has not accused any of the former presidents of wrongdoing.
The judge said a handful of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who had been sexually abused. The Associated Press typically does not identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they choose to go public with their stories, as Giuffre did.
WHEN WILL THE REST OF THE DOCUMENTS BE PUBLIC?
The judge has not set a target for when all the documents should be released, but more documents are expected to arrive in the next few days.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that although the police investigation of Epstein in Palm Beach, Florida began in 2005, he was not arrested until 2006.
