Jeffrey Epstein list: Whose names are on the newly unsealed documents?

The documents have unearthed sexual assault allegations against Prince Andrew. Donald Trump and Bill Clinton are also mentioned.

By Sarah Shamim
Published On 4 Jan 2024
4 Jan 2024
About 950 pages of court documents identifying associates of financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday.

What is the Jeffrey Epstein list?
Included in the unsealed papers are the names of about 150 Epstein associates. The documents were filed as part of Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator in his sexual abuse scheme. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
Giuffre is one of the women who sued Epstein for abusing them at his homes in Florida, New York, the United States Virgin Islands and New Mexico. She said she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social orbit.

Other documents were unsealed by the court from 2019 to 2022.

Last month, a judge listed in a 50-page document about 180 people – under pseudonyms – ordering that their identities be made public within 14 days of the order. Some individuals have objected to the disclosure of their identities in the case.

The inclusion of a name on the list does not indicate there are any allegations against the individual.

Prince Andrew

The documents unsealed on Wednesday have revealed sexual assault allegations against the British royal.
Johanna Sjoberg, who is one of the many women who have accused Epstein of sexual abuse, said Andrew put his hand on her breast in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2001.
This was while he was taking a photo with Sjoberg and Giuffre. Maxwell and Epstein were present while this photo was taken. Sjoberg said the photo also included a puppet that said “Prince Andrew” on it.
The incident, which has been previously reported by other media outlets and which Andrew has denied, was in an initial trove of previously redacted documents that otherwise revealed few new details about the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking activities.
Sjoberg was recruited to work for Epstein by Maxwell, who had been his girlfriend in the early 1990s before they became professional collaborators and accomplices in sex crimes for almost three decades.
While Sjoberg was hired as an assistant when she was a 20-year-old college student, she was quickly turned into a massage therapist and was sexually coerced while she worked for Maxwell and Epstein from 2001 to 2006.
Giuffre, now 38, accused Andrew of sexually abusing her two decades ago when she was 17, an allegation the prince called baseless. The case was settled in 2022.
According to the documents, Sjoberg said she witnessed Giuffre, then 17, in Epstein’s New York mansion with Andrew, Epstein and Maxwell. She also said she believes what Giuffre has said about Andrew and Epstein sexually abusing her.

Alan Dershowitz

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is well-known for his work in US criminal law. The documents pertaining to him include allegations made by an unnamed woman, Jane Doe #3.
Jane Doe #3 said Epstein “required” her to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on multiple occasions when she was a minor.
Dershowitz also played a significant role in negotiating an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only for Epstein but also for “any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”, the documents say.
Epstein’s housekeeper Juan Alessi testified that Dershowitz would often visit Epstein’s Florida mansion to get massages.
Another one of Epstein’s household employees, Alfredo Rodriquez, said the lawyer would be present at Epstein’s residence without his family and in the presence of girls.
Dershowitz said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday that Jane Doe #3 misidentified him, and he denied ever meeting her. He suggested he was the victim of the MeToo movement’s “hypocrisy”, accusing “radical feminists” of focusing on Epstein and his associates while not “condemning Hamas”, the Palestinian armed group.

Jean-Luc Brunel

Jean-Luc Brunel was a French model scout who was awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls when he died by suicide in a Paris jail in 2022.
Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse. She said Maxwell sent her to many places to have sex with Brunel. The documents also say Brunel would exploit underage girls from disadvantaged backgrounds by offering them modelling jobs but would then bring them to the US and “farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein”.
According to the documents, Jane Doe #3 accused Epstein of trafficking her to Brunel, who was Epstein’s close travel companion. She said she was also forced to watch Brunel, Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulting underage girls.
Rolling Stone magazine published a report on Tuesday about a recent Los Angeles lawsuit in which a new woman accused Brunel of holding her hostage at a Canadian estate so she could be sexually abused by multiple men when she was 18.

David Copperfield

Sjoberg testified to meeting American magician David Copperfield at one of Epstein’s houses. She added that she observed him to be a friend of Epstein’s. She also recalled a girl at that dinner who she thought looked like she was of high-school age.
Sjoberg said Copperfield asked her if she knew that “girls were getting paid to find other girls”, referring to the recruitment of women by Epstein and Maxwell as “massage therapists”.

Bill Clinton

Former US President Bill Clinton is also mentioned in the court documents.
While Sjoberg said she did not meet Clinton, she testified that Epstein said to her: “Clinton likes them young,” apparently referring to girls. While Giuffre had mentioned earlier that Clinton and Epstein had a close relationship, she did not accuse him of any illegal action.
Clinton has repeatedly rejected all allegations that he was involved in anything unlawful and has said he had no interactions with Epstein for several years prior to the financier’s arrest.

Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump is also mentioned in the documents but not accused.
Sjoberg mentioned an incident when she left with Epstein, Giuffre and a few others on a plane from Palm Beach, Florida, in 2001.
When the plane was unable to land in New York due to a storm, they had to land in Atlantic City and went to one of Trump’s casinos. Since Giuffre was underage at the time, Sjoberg was asked if she was allowed into the casino.
“I did not know anything about how old you had to be to gamble legally. I just knew she could not get in because of an ID issue, so she and I did not gamble,” Sjoberg answered.

Stephen Hawking

The late physicist’s name was mentioned in an email sent by Epstein to Maxwell in January 2015. In this email, Epstein told Maxwell to “issue a reward” to any of Giuffre’s friends, family and acquaintances to come forward and disprove Giuffre’s allegations, including against Hawking.

“the strongest is the clinton dinner, and the new version in the virgin isalnds that stven hawking partica-ted in an underage orgy,” the email said.

Michael Jackson

Sjoberg said she saw the late singer at Epstein’s residence. When she was asked if she gave him a massage, she said no.

More names to come

Not all the documents have been unsealed. The judge hasn’t set a target for when all of the documents should be made public, but more documents are expected to come out in the next few days. Lawyers for one individual, Doe 107, wrote to the judge, arguing they could face victimisation in their home country and requested time to submit grounds for their name to remain sealed.

The National Post

Dozens of names of Jeffery Epstein’s associates mentioned in court documents were unsealed on Wednesday evening.

The first 40 documents, of around 250 expected to eventually be unsealed, largely mention figures whose names were already known, including high-profile friends of Epstein’s and victims who have spoken publicly.

The list of names includes famous celebrities, artists and politicians linked to Epstein, some mentioned only in passing. It also includes the names former employees and accusers of the late financier and convicted pedophile.

The documents being unsealed are part of a 2015 lawsuit filed against Maxwell by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of the dozens of women who sued Epstein saying he had abused them at his homes in Florida, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and New Mexico.

The following is the full, 943-page document and the list of names mentioned, some of which are still redacted. The inclusion of a name does not imply any wrongdoing, and none of the allegations included in the filing were upheld in court.

1. Ghislaine Maxwell
2. Virginia Lee Roberts Giuffre
3. Kathy Alexander
4. Miles Alexander
5. James Michael Austrich
6. Juan and Maria Alessi, husband and wife employees at Epstein’s Palm Beach home
7. Janusz Banasiak, Epstein’s Palm Beach house manager
8. Philip Barden, Maxwell's attorney
9. Redacted
10. Cate Blanchett
11. David Boies, litigator
12. Laura Boothe, Mar-a-Lago employee
13. Evelyn Boulet
14. Rebecca Boylan, Roberts Giuffre’s friend
15. Jean-Luc Brunel
16. Joshua Bunner
17. Naomi Campbell
18. Carolyn Casey
19. Paul Cassell
20. Sharon Churcher, Daily Mail reporter
21. Bill Clinton
22. Alexandra Cousteau
23. Cameron Diaz
24. Leonardo Di Caprio
25. Alan Dershowitz
26. Dr. Mona Devanesan
27. Glenn and Eva Dubin
28. Redacted
29. Bradley Edwards
30. Amanda Ellison
31. Cimberly Espinosa, former assistant of Maxwell’s
32. Ron Eppinger
33. Annie Farmer, accused Epstein
34. Marie Farmer, accused Epstein
35. Alexandra Fekkai
36. Fredrick Fekkai
37. Crystal Figueroa, sister of Anthony
38. Anthony Figueroa, was in relationship with Roberts Giuffre in 2001
39. Jo Jo Fontanella, Epstein’s butler
40. Louis Freeh, former FBI director
41. Eric Gany
42. Meg Garvin, represented Roberts Giuffre
43. Sheridan Gibson-Butte
44. Robert Giuffre
45. Ross Gow
46. Al Gore
47. Eric Gany
48. Fred Graff
49. Philip Guderyon
50. Redacted
51. Dr. John Harris, treated Roberts Giuffre
52. Joanna Harrison
53. Shannon Harrison
54. Stephen Hawking
55. Dr. Carol Hayek, treated Roberts Giuffre
56. Victoria Hazel
57. Brittany Henderson
58. Michael Jackson
59. Brett Jaffe
60. Forest Jones
61. Stephen Kaufmann
62. Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s former assistant
63. Carol Roberts Kess
64. Dr. Karen Kutikoff, treated Robert Giuffre
65. Paul Lavery
66. Wendy Leigh, author and Daily Mail reporter
67. Dr. Judith Lightfoot, a psychiatrist who treated Roberts Giuffre
68. Peter Listerman
69. George Lucas
70. Tony Lyons
71. Dr. Darshanee Majaliyana, treated Roberts Giuffre
72. Bob Meister
73. Jamie A. Melanson
74. Lynn Miller, Roberts Giuffre’s mother
75. Marvin Minsky
76. Redacted
77. David Mullen
78. Joe Pagano
79. Mary Paluga
80. J. Stanley Pottinger
81. Joseph Recarey, investigator
82. Michael Reiter, investigator
83. Jason Richards
84. Bill Richardson
85. Sky Roberts
86. Scott Rothstein
87. Forest Sawyer
88. Douglas Schoetlle, investigator
89. Kevin Spacey
90. Cecilia Stein
91. Mark Tafoya
92. Brent Tindall
93. Kevin Thompson
94. Ed Tuttle
95. Donald Trump
96. Emma Vaghan
97. Kimberly Vaughan-Edwards
98. Cresenda Valdes
99. Anthoney Valladares
100. Maritza Vazquez
101. Dr. Wah Wah, treated Roberts Giuffre
102. Vicky Ward, reporter
103. Jarred Weisfeld
104. Leslie Wexner
105. Courtney Wild, accuser
106. Bruce Willis
107. Daniel Wilson
108. Andrew Albert Christian Edwards (Prince Andrew)

The New York Magazine: Trump’s Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein: Everything We Know

By Margaret Hartmann, senior editor for Intelligencer who has worked at New York since 2012

While Jeffrey Epstein’s black book contained a staggering number of A-listers and high-society pals, perhaps the biggest question surrounding last year’s release of a tranche of Epstein court documents was what they would reveal about Donald Trump. The hype reached a fever pitch on January 3, 2024, when Mark Epstein claimed that before his brother died in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, he told him he knew secrets that could blow up the presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton. “Here’s a direct quote: ‘If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016,” Mark Epstein told the New York Post.

Wild stuff! But Mark Epstein said he didn’t know what information his brother was referring to. And while Trump was mentioned in both old court documents and the batches released in 2024, there was no smoking gun.

Trump has repeatedly denied any Epstein-related wrongdoing. Yet questions about the president’s ties to Epstein persist, as the convicted sex offender is a conspiracy-theory fixture. Here’s a running list of everything we’ve learned about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.

What do we know about Trump’s friendship with Epstein?

Trump began palling around with Epstein in the late ’80s, but the depth of their friendship is a subject of debate.

Footage unearthed by NBC News in 2019 shows the two men joking around and ogling women during a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992.

https://youtu.be/AUDr_c2PalI?si=QQpXxkp3KqtmV4kc

Trump and Epstein were also photographed together in 1992 and 1997. The now famous image below shows Trump and then-girlfriend Melania Knauss partying with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago on February 12, 2000.

Photo: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images

In 2002, the mogul told New York, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Is the photo of Epstein with Donald Trump, Eric, and Ivanka real?

Yes. In recent years a 1993 photo of Trump and his children standing next to Epstein has been circulating online.

Snopes.com confirmed that the image is real with the photographer, Dafydd Jones:

The 1993 photo was captioned: “Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harley Davidson Cafe opening. Manhattan. 1993.”

“I can of course confirm that those people were all at the Harley Davidson Cafe and I did do a picture in black and white on film,” Jones wrote to us via email in early 2024.

This should not be confused with the bogus image that shows Donald kissing a young Ivanka on the head, with Epstein in the foreground. That photo was edited to add Epstein, according to FactCheck.org.

Did Trump go to the island Epstein owned?

There is no evidence that Trump ever visited Little St. James, Epstein’s residence located in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein allegedly trafficked and sexually abused women and girls there, which is why it was nicknamed “Orgy Island,” “Pedophile Island,” and “Island of Sin.”

Trump has denied that he ever visited Epstein’s island. But he’s been happy to fan similar unfounded conspiracy theories about his political rivals. When asked in 2019 if he believes the Clintons were involved in Epstein’s death, Trump answered:

I have no idea. I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times. But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton, who was a very good friend of Epstein, was on the plane about 27 or 28 times, so why did he say four times?

And then the question you have to ask is ‘Did Bill Clinton go to the island?’ because Epstein had an island that was not a good place as I understand it, and I was never there. So you have to ask, ‘Did Bill Clinton go to the island?’ If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.

Like Trump, Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane. But none of the Epstein flight logs list either former president as passengers on Virgin Islands-bound flights. A Clinton spokesman said the former president “has never been to Little St. James” and his office has repeatedly said he “knows nothing” about Epstein’s “terrible crimes.”

Did Trump ever fly on Epstein’s plane?

Yes. Flight logs show Trump was on Epstein’s plane multiple times, though he has denied it.

Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times between 1993 and 1997, according to flight logs made public during various court proceedings. As the Miami Herald reported in 2021, Trump was accompanied by his then-wife Marla Maples and two of his young children on some of these flights:

The flights were all between Palm Beach and New York City airports, with the June 1994 flight stopping at Ronald Reagan Washington Washington National Airport between Palm Beach and New York.

A woman named Marla, apparently Trump’s then-wife Marla Maples, is listed as joining him on the June 1994 flight, along with a Tiffany, apparently their then-infant daughter, and a nanny. Trump’s son Eric is listed as joining him on an August 1995 flight between Palm Beach and New York.

Nevertheless, in a January 2024 Truth Social post, Trump claimed “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.”

Bizarrely, it seems Trump unwittingly used Epstein’s plane during the 2024 campaign. The Miami Herald reported that the Trump campaign used a blue Gulfstream jet formerly owned by Epstein to travel to several campaign fundraisers after Trump’s private jet experienced mechanical problems on Friday, August 9, 2024.

Epstein’s old plane is now owned by Threshold Aviation Group, an Ontario, California-based company that offers private charter service. The Herald noted that the plane used by the Trump campaign was not the infamous “Lolita Express”; Epstein replaced that plane around 2017 and it “has since been destroyed.”

A Trump campaign official told the New York Times that it has used the private jet vendor for years, and will try to avoid using Epstein’s old plane in the future.

What’s going on with Katie Johnson and the allegations against Trump?

In 2016 a woman who went by the pseudonyms Katie Johnson and Jane Doe in legal filings accused Trump of raping her in 1994, when she was 13, during an orgy held at Epstein’s home in Manhattan. She accused Epstein of raping her as well.

Three suits were filed over the same allegations; the first was dismissed for failure to properly state a claim, and the other two were voluntarily dismissed. The third case was withdrawn just days before the 2016 election, and the accuser canceled a press conference at the last minute. Her attorney, Lisa Bloom, said the woman had received death threats and, “She has decided she is too afraid to show her face … She is in terrible fear.”

The circumstances around the case were bizarre, as Vox summarized at the time:

It was the end of an incredibly strange case that featured an anonymous plaintiff who had refused almost all requests for interviews, two anonymous corroborating witnesses whom no one in the press had spoken to, and a couple of seriously shady characters — with an anti-Trump agenda and a penchant for drama — who had aggressively shopped the story around to media outlets for over a year.

Those shady characters — a former reality-TV producer who calls himself Al Taylor and a Never Trump conservative activist named Steve Baer — had been mostly unsuccessful in getting the media to bite. There are a few very good reasons for that, which the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim succinctly summed up: Taylor and Baer have been really sketchy about the whole thing, and since the accuser is anonymous, journalists can’t do anything to verify her claims. The only journalist who has actually interviewed Johnson, Emily Shugerman at Revelist, came away confused and even doubting whether Johnson really exists.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 other women over the years; those women were not underage, and their allegations did not involve Epstein. In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her when he denied her rape allegation in 2022. He was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages and is currently appealing the verdict.

What did Michael Wolff say about tapes and photos of Trump and Epstein?

Author Michael Wolff made several salacious claims about Epstein and Trump on the October 31, 2024 episode of his podcast Fire and Fury, which he co-hosts with former Condé Nast editor James Truman. On November 2, The Daily Beast published another Wolff tape in which Epstein claimed, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”

On his podcast, Wolff, who wrote three books about the Trump administration, said Epstein had showed him about half a dozen photos of Trump with “topless young women” sitting in his lap, which were taken in the late ‘90s at Epstein’s Palm Beach home. The Daily Beast reported:

Wolff said of the photos, “They were with Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach house sitting around the pool with these young girls, and the young girls are topless.

“And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap. I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.” Trump separated from his second wife Marla Maples in 1997 and began dating his third wife, Melania, in 1998.

Wolff said Epstein kept the photos in his safe, which was seized by the FBI when they raided his homes in July 2019. The author said that during the Trump administration, the convicted sex offender was “utterly preoccupied with Trump, and I think, frankly, afraid of him.”

In the same episode, Wolff claimed that in the ‘90s Trump and Epstein were “very competitive” especially when it came to women, and “shared a girlfriend” at one point, per Newsweek. Wolff also said that at one point they “had a competition about who would be the first one who would sleep with Princess Diana,” though he added, “Now, I don’t think that ever happened.”

Wolff also played a purported recording of Epstein talking with him about Trump’s White House team, which he said was made in a New York restaurant in 2017. Wolff claimed he his recordings of Epstein discussing Trump total around 100 hours.

In the recording published on November 2, which Wolff said was recorded in August 2017, Epstein says Trump is “charming,” but “He’s a horrible human being. He does nasty things to his best friends, best friends’ wives, anyone who he first tries to gain their trust and uses it to do bad things to them.”

Epstein also claims Trump liked to “fuck the wives of his best friends,” and describes his elaborate schemes for seducing his friends’ partners. Wolff says Epstein also bragged about his closeness to Donald and Melania by saying, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” the so-called “Lolita Express.” Flight logs show Trump flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times, though there is obviously no way to verify this specific claim.

Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 election campaign, responded by pointing out that Wolff’s reporting has been questioned in the past. She told the Daily Beast:

Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics. He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.

What did Stacey Williams say about Trump and Epstein?

Less than two weeks before the 2024 election, former model Stacey Williams accused Trump of groping her in 1993 as Epstein looked on.

Williams had previously alluded to this on social media, but she publicly described the incident in detail for the first time during a Zoom call on October 21 organized Survivors4Harris, a group of sexual-abuse survivors supporting Kamala Harris.

Williams said that during a 1993 walk with Epstein, who she was dating, he suggested they stop into Trump Tower to visit Donald. She said on the call:

Moments later, Trump was greeting us. And he pulled me into him, and started groping me. He put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt. And I froze. And I froze because I was so deeply confused about what was happening because the hands were moving all over me yet these two men were like smiling at one another and continuing on in their conversation.

She said Epstein berated her afterward, and she came to feel that the groping was part of a “twisted game” between the two men. A short time later, Trump sent Williams a postcard from Mar-a-Lago via her agent. The Guardian published a photo of it on October 23.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the story, telling The Guardian: “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”

When did Trump cut ties with Epstein?

Trump has claimed that he and Epstein had a “falling out” years before the financier was first arrested in Palm Beach in 2005 after being accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. (Though dozens of other underage girls accused Epstein of sexual abuse at the time, because of a 2008 plea deal, he served only 13 months in jail in a work-release program.)

There are reports that a battle over a choice Palm Beach property ended the Trump-Epstein friendship, but it’s unclear what exactly came between the two. Days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump downplayed their relationship while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He said he merely “knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” adding, “I had a falling out with him. I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

Why were more Epstein documents released this year?

The newly unsealed documents are from Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s settled 2015 defamation lawsuit against Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislane Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison term for trafficking women and girls for Epstein to sexually abuse. Giuffre is one of dozens of women, some as young as 14, whom Epstein allegedly abused.

Some documents were blacked out or sealed over privacy concerns when the suit was settled in 2017. But in December 2023, federal judge Loretta Preska ruled that most of the records would be made public since most of the names were already public. The first 40 exhibits, totaling 943 pages, were released on January 3, 2024. Another 17 documents were unsealed on January 8. Seven more documents were released on January 9. (Read about the other figures listed in the new Epstein documents here.)

On January 3, 2024, Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung offered a terse statement on the newly released documents, telling Newsweek that any claims about Trump’s relationship with Epstein had already been “thoroughly debunked.”

What did the January 3 batch say about Trump?

In short: not much. His name was mentioned four times in a May 2016 deposition of Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s alleged victims, who said she was around him from 2001 to 2006.

Sjoberg said that while flying on one of Epstein’s planes, they made an unplanned stop in Atlantic City and went to “one of Trump’s casinos.” She recalled that when she relayed the pilot’s message that they would need to land in New Jersey, “Jeffrey said, ‘Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to’ — I don’t recall the name of the casino, but — ‘we’ll go to the casino.’”

Later, Sjoberg said she never gave Trump a massage.

What did the January 8 batch say about Trump?

One of the 17 exhibits unsealed on January 8 references Trump — but he is only named in emails an Epstein victim sent to a journalist, which she provided no evidence to support and later recanted.

In emails exchanged with then–New York Post journalist Maureen Callahan in October 2016, Sarah Ransome made a number of explosive allegations against famous men, saying her friend had had sex with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Richard Branson on multiple occasions. Ransome also said she had videos of the encounters but could not share them without her friend’s permission.

All of the famous men named by Ransome denied her claims. A Virgin Group spokesperson said, “We categorically reject all allegations made by Sarah Ransome. In 2019 she admitted to The New Yorker that the ‘tapes’ had been ‘invented.’ Any suggestion that Sir Richard Branson was involved in a ‘sex tape’ is entirely false. The allegations are baseless and unfounded.”

In one of the now-recanted emails, summarized below by attorneys representing Alan Dershowitz, Ransome said her friend was one of “many girls” Trump had had sex with, claimed the friend regularly had sex with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, and shared other NSFW details about Trump’s sexual proclivities:

Ransome’s email that includes the claims about Trump appears later in the document and is partially cut off:

In the document, Dershowitz’s attorneys used the emails to portray Ransome as a liar, noting that she had made many outlandish claims to journalist Maureen Callahan, such as saying she’d reached out to the Russians for help and was “approached, by Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hilary [sic] Clinton herself, in order to protect her presidential campaign.” For example:

In her final email to Callahan, Ransome says she wants to “retract everything I have said to you and walk away from this.” Callahan never published a story related to her allegations.

Ransome then told The New Yorker in 2019 that she never had any videos. In her 2021 memoir, Silenced No More, Ransome explained why:

I also told her I had video evidence of public figures participating in Jeffrey and Ghislaine’s pedophile ring. I didn’t. I said I did because I was absolutely terrified that, once I went public with my story, Jeffrey and Ghislaine would find and kill me. I wanted to send them a message via the press: If you wage war on me, I will return fire by releasing my evidence. That would be my leverage, my way of protecting myself.

As ABC News noted, while Ransome was involved in various lawsuits against Epstein, no evidence supporting these claims appears in publicly available court records:

Ransome was deposed in 2017 as a witness in the Giuffre versus Maxwell litigation. No evidence supporting the allegations Ransome shared with the reporter was entered in the record of this case.

The lawsuit Ransome filed in 2017 under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 43” against Epstein, Maxwell and other alleged co-conspirators was settled the following year.

Neither Clinton, nor Trump, nor Branson was accused by Giuffre, or anyone else besides Ransome, of any wrongdoing in the course of Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against Maxwell.

Ransome gave a victim-impact statement in federal court at Maxwell’s sentencing that did not specifically mention Trump or anyone but Epstein and Maxwell.

What did the January 9 batch say about Trump?

Trump’s name appeared four times in a deposition of Giuffre taken on January 16, 2016. She said that while she’d heard Trump had been in Epstein’s home, she never saw him there herself, adding, “I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything.”

Trump’s name was also mentioned in passing later in the deposition when he was described as one of Epstein’s famous friends.

Giuffre testified that she had been recruited into Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring by Maxwell, who approached her in 2000 when Giuffre was a 17-year-old spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s Florida resort comes up more than a dozen times in the newly released depositions, as Epstein and Maxwell are questioned about how they met Giuffre. But Giuffre has said she had no relationship with Trump beyond his being her employer.

Will more Epstein documents be made public?

The final batch of documents from Giuffre’s settled 2015 defamation lawsuit was released in January 2024. But other Epstein-related court records could still be made public.

On February 29, 2024, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that paved the way for the release of grand-jury evidence and testimony from a 2006 Florida investigation into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The law says grand-jury records, which are usually secret, can be made public under limited circumstances.

The state’s initial investigation into Epstein’s sex ring has long been controversial, as New York’s Matt Stieb explained:

The state’s response to the initial investigation of Epstein’s sex ring in Florida has long been controversial. After police produced substantial evidence that Epstein was procuring and abusing girls, the state attorney’s office for Palm Beach County kicked the responsibility to a grand jury rather than charging Epstein directly. The grand jury ultimately led to one felony count against Epstein for soliciting prostitution — with no mention that the alleged victims were teenagers. Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter published a letter he sent to five alleged victims stating that he did not believe “justice has been sufficiently served.” Reiter then brought the case to the FBI — which ultimately led to federal charges against Epstein and more controversy: Somehow, the financier scored a sweetheart deal signed by federal prosecutor Alex Acosta, which allowed him to leave jail six days a week for 12 hours at a time. (In 2019, Acosta resigned from his position as secretary of Labor after facing criticism for his role in the deal.)

Judge Luis Delgado ordered the records released on July 1, 2024, the day the new law went into effect. The 176-page transcript does not mention Trump or Mar-a-Lago. As the Washington Post reported, the “long sought-after records that show how prosecutors attempted to paint two young women who testified as criminals rather than victims of sexual abuse.”

In recent weeks many old Epstein court documents that mention his relationship with Trump have been circulating on social media. As Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter whose 2018 investigative series helped revive the criminal case against Epstein, clarified on X, these records were released years ago. This was confirmed by the Washington Post’s fact checker. The only new document released in July 2024 is the 176-page Florida grand jury transcript, which contains no new information about Trump.

What has Trump said about the release of more Epstein documents?

In a June 2, 2024, Fox & Friends interview, Trump was asked if he would declassify various federal files. He quickly answered “yes” when asked about documents on 9/11, the JFK assassination, and Epstein — but then backtracked on the sex trafficker.

“I guess I would,” Trump said. “I think [Epstein] less so because you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would, or at least—”

Interviewer Rachel Campos-Duffy tried to get Trump back on topic, but he continued musing about the Epstein files.

“Yeah, I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died,” Trump replied. “It’d be interesting to find out what happened there because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.”

In an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman released September 3, 2024 Trump lightly praised Epstein when asked why he had so many powerful associates.

“He was a good salesman; he was, you know, a hailing, hearty type of guy,” Trump said. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands.”

Trump did not commit to releasing more files on Epstein and his associates if reelected, but he said he’d “certainly take a look at it.”

“I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it,” Trump added.

On January 23, 2025, Trump signed an executive order calling for the release of the remaining classified documents on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. — but not Epstein.

Days later, several Republican senators told The Bulwark that the think the Epstein files should be released too, even if they name Trump.

“I’d like to see them,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). When I asked Kennedy why he thinks Trump didn’t include Epstein, he said, “I don’t know. If I talk to him, I’ll ask him, but I’d like to see them. I’ll be the first in line.”

“I don’t care if he’s named in them,” Kennedy added of the possibility of a Trump cameo in the files. “The American people are entitled to know the truth. The man’s dead as Jimmy Hoffa—he’s gone—and his sidekick’s in jail. We’re entitled to know what he did, who he did it with, and whether he broke any laws.”

What has Trump said about Epstein’s death?

During an August 2023 interview, Tucker Carlson asked Trump if he believed Epstein had killed himself in jail. “I don’t know,” said Trump, who seemed more interested in bashing his former attorney general Bill Barr. After more prodding from Carlson, Trump said that he thought it was “possible” Epstein had been killed but that “I think he probably committed suicide.”

“Life with beautiful homes, beautiful everything, and all of a sudden he’s incarcerated and not doing well,” Trump said. “A lot of people think he was killed. He knew a lot on a lot of people.” Carlson confirmed that he was among those who believe Epstein “was killed,” and Trump replied that “a case could be made either way.”