Spokespersons for Clinton have said he made trips to Europe, Asia and Africa on Epstein’s plane and that the former president had met with the financier in 2002….reports Asian Lite News
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are mentioned in newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein-related court documents, but they are not accused of any wrongdoing involving the disgraced sex trafficking financier.
Clinton, who sometimes flew aboard Epstein’s private plane, is listed repeatedly in the documents. He was the topic of an argument over the credibility of a witness who said she saw the former president when he was a guest of Epstein.
Trump’s name appears in a document in which Epstein is quoted as saying he would invite the then-real estate mogul to join him at a casino. In another document, a witness said she was never asked to engage in sexual relations with Trump.
“The Epstein list and guilt by association,” Dershowitz said on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). On Fox News, Dershowitz said that “the woman who accused me has now stated categorically that she may have misidentified me continuously with someone else … I never met her, never heard of her, never spoke to her.”
Among others named: billionaire hedge fund founder Glenn Dubin, high-powered fashion CEO Les Wexner, and deceased modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
All of the accused have denied allegations of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Most of the documents unsealed late Wednesday were part of a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims. More documents − and names − are expected to be released on Thursday.
One of Giuffre’s attorneys, Sigrid McCawley, said more needs to be known about “who enabled and facilitated” Epstein’s trafficking network, and that survivors of his abuse deserve more justice.
“The public interest must still be served in learning more about the scale and scope of Epstein’s racket to further the important goal of shutting down sex trafficking wherever it exists and holding more to account,” McCawley said. “The unsealing of these documents gets us closer to that goal.”
Other names released on Wednesday include sex abuse victims, litigation witnesses, and Epstein associates and employees. Many had only a tangential connection to the financier, who was accused of operating an international sex trafficking ring targeting underage girls. Some are now deceased.
David Ring, a California-based trial lawyer who has represented many sexual abuse victims, said public release of information can help victims gain closure. He noted that victims are often restricted by civil settlements from talking about the abuse they experienced.
“Anytime that there’s a spotlight that’s shown on the perpetrator and his circle of friends and what went on there, I think that’s a good thing,” Ring said. “It gives the victims a lot of closure, frankly, instead of just secrecy where they’re not even allowed to talk about it.”
Trump, Clinton supporters trade charges
Previous releases listed both Clinton and Trump as passengers on Epstein’s private plane, but neither has been accused of wrongdoing.
For years, supporters of Trump and Clinton have accused one another of greater involvement with Epstein. But nothing in the new documents backs up these claims.
Trump posed with Epstein and Maxwell in a now-famous photo taken in 2000 at Mar-a-Lago, his private Palm Beach club. In 2002 he referred to Epstein as a “terrific guy” during an interview with New York Magazine.
“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump later said he had broken with Epstein. “I had a falling out with him a long time ago, I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years,” Trump said in 2019. “I wasn’t a fan.”
Spokespersons for Clinton have said he made trips to Europe, Asia and Africa on Epstein’s plane and that the former president had met with the financier in his Manhattan office in 2002.
“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” a Clinton spokesman said in 2019.
Among the documents released Wednesday is the transcript of a 2016 deposition in which a second Epstein victim testified that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.” She didn’t elaborate.
That victim testified that after landing in Atlantic City, N.J. on one occasion, “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.'” She also told the deposition that Prince Andrew had inappropriately touched her at Epstein’s mansion in New York.
District Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered the unsealing of more documents in mid-December, noting that most of the information was already public and that people named in the documents had not objected to their release.
Hours before the release, Judge Preska wrote Wednesday that two persons identified as “Doe 107” and “Doe 110” had asked that their names remain under seal, pending future court action.
The documents stem from a now-settled 2015 lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and partner Ghislaine Maxwell of directing her involvement with prominent men.
In pretrial litigation, Maxwell said Giuffre lied about about seeing Clinton on Epstein’s private Caribbean island, and that this assertion undercut her credibility in general. This dispute is the reason the former president’s name pops up so frequently in the documents.
Clinton’s office referred reporters a 2019 statement that said the former president “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
The statement said Clinton has never been to Epstein’s island, and had “not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade.”
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