Former US President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew named in Jeffrey Epstein court files

 NEW YORK: Former US President Bill Clinton and the UK’s Prince Andrew have been named in court documents detailing people who were connected to the late disgraced American financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to media reports.

More than 900 pages of unsealed documents from a lawsuit connected to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 as he awaited federal sex-trafficking charges, were publicly released on Wednesday following an order by New York federal judge Loretta Preska.

This is the first set of files to be unsealed under a December 18, 2023 court order, with more expected in the coming weeks, reports CNN.

According to CNN, nearly 200 names are expected to surface, including some of Epstein’s accusers, prominent businesspeople, as well as politicians.

While ordering the release of the documents, Judge Preska said many of those named in the lawsuit had already been identified by the media or in the criminal trial of Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year jail term for crimes she committed with the late financier, the BBC reported.

She added that many others did not raise an objection to the release of the documents. The files include references to Johanna Sjoberg, who has claimed that Prince Andrew groped her while sitting on a couch inside Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2001.

The documents also contain excerpts of depositions taken of Maxwell and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was paid in millions by Prince Andrew to settle a lawsuit she had filed alleging that he sexually abused her when she was 17 years old.

Prince Andrew has however, denied the allegations and maintained that he had never met Giuffre.

Meanwhile, former President Clinton, who is also named in the documents, had travelled on Epstein’s plane on humanitarian trips to Africa, but he later cut ties with him.

The files include testimony from Maxwell confirming that Clinton had travelled on board Epstein’s private jet, but she did not know how many times.

According to the documents, when asked if Clinton was a friend of Epstein’s, Sjoberg had testified that she understood that the late sex offender had “dealings” with the former President. She further said that Epstein had “told her one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”. Clinton’s representatives however, said that he “knows nothing” about Epstein’s crimes.

The documents also includes testimony from Sjoberg saying that Epstein told her he would contact former US President Donald Trump on their way to one of his New Jersey casinos, the BBC reported. “Jeffrey said, ‘Great, we’ll call up Trump,’” she testified, after pilots said their plane could not land in New York and would need to stop in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

But the documents contained no alleged wrongdoing by Trump.

Epstein was indicted in 2019 on federal charges of operating a sex trafficking ring in which he allegedly sexually abused dozens of underage girls. His death was ruled to be a suicide by the New York medical examiner. (IANS)

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