Jeffrey Epstein scandal: Federal judge to unseal 180 previously redacted names
A federal judge in New York has ordered the unsealing of dozens of documents naming people linked to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.
The documents are expected to identify more than 180 people, including associates, victims, investigators and journalists who covered the case. Some of the names will remain under seal, including those belonging to minor victims who never spoke publicly about the case and a person who the judge said was wrongly identified as an alleged perpetrator by a reporter.
At least one person asked the court not to release her name, arguing that it could put her at risk of physical harm.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska outlined the reasoning in a 51-page order Monday. The order comes as part of a 2015 lawsuit between Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre and his former lover and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. The case was settled in 2017, but the judge indicated in hearings in 2021 and 2022 that the names would not remain sealed indefinitely.
Giuffre has alleged that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her when she was 17 years old. She is now in her 30s.
Some of the names have been withheld in some documents but belong to people who have either spoken publicly about their connections to Epstein, have already been identified in other court documents or were identified in Maxwell's trial.
The order included a two-week delay to give anyone whose name would be disclosed time to appeal.
Other documents already unsealed in the case include portions of the 2016 deposition of Rinaldo Rizzo, a former private chef for the hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, who claimed Epstein and Maxwell came over with a disoriented, 15-year-old Swedish girl.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide. Federal investigators upheld the designation in a 128-page report released in June.
DOZENS OF GHISLAINE MAXWELL FILES UNSEALED BY FEDERAL COURT IN SEX TRAFFICKING CASE
Epstein, already a convicted sex offender in Florida, died at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York while awaiting federal trial for sex trafficking. While finding flaws with the Bureau of Prisons and its staff members, the report also uncovered no evidence to contradict the designation of Epstein's death as a suicide.
"While the OIG (Office of the Inspector General) determined MCC New York staff engaged in significant misconduct, we did not uncover evidence contradicting the FBI’s determination regarding the absence of criminality in connection with how Epstein died," the report read. "We did not find, for example, evidence that anyone was present in the SHU area where Epstein was housed during the relevant timeframe other than the inmates who were locked in their assigned cells."
Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence on sex trafficking charges.
There is still an ongoing fight to release the names of Epstein's clients and people who traveled on his private jet – which came to a head in Congress last week when Republicans in the House and Senate accused Democrats of "stonewalling" their requests for those documents.