Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the most recent documents made available.
On Thursday night, a 600-plus-page trove of documents related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and alleged procurer, was unsealed. While many of the accusations within the 2,000 pages were already widely reported, the unsealed documents — containing depositions, email correspondence, police reports and more — paint a fuller, more frightening picture of the alleged sex trafficking operation orchestrated by Maxwell and Epstein.
The court documents had been subject to a years-long battle, with Maxwell’s lawyers attempting to block them, arguing that they would prevent her from receiving a fair trial. Thursday night, however, Judge Loretta Preska rejected the request.
The documents stem from a now-settled 2015 civil lawsuit between Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, and Maxwell. Giuffre has alleged that Maxwell and Epstein trafficked her at the age of 15 and pimped her out to notable men around the world, including Prince Andrew, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Prince Andrew and Dershowitz have denied all charges. In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Richardson previously said: “These allegations and inferences are completely false…. Governor Richardson has never been to Mr. Epstein’s residence in the Virgin Islands. Governor Richardson has never met Ms. Giuffre.”
“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” says Giuffre in the unsealed court documents. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”
In July, Maxwell was arrested and charged with six criminal counts, including transportation of a minor with intent to engage in sexual activity. The indictment alleges she groomed girls as young as 14 to have sex with her and Epstein. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment and has denied all of the allegations against her. Representatives for Maxwell did not return a request for comment at press time. (In the past, she has denied all allegations.)
Here’s what we’ve learned from the court filings.
Over the course of the documents, the words “Donald Trump” and “good friend” appear five times together to describe his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
While the mogul-turned-president is mentioned 14 times throughout the unredacted portion of the unsealed documents, Giuffre — who came to Epstein and Maxwell’s attention as an employee at Mar-A-Lago — admitted she never witnessed or heard of Trump in connection with any wrongdoing related to Epstein. “[Trump] didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me. He’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘You’ve got the life,’” Giuffre said in a deposition. (She later denied Trump had flirted with her.)
Giuffre alleges Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s island at the same time as young girls.
Although Bill Clinton has denied allegations that he ever visited Little St. James, Epstein’s private island, Giuffre disputes this, saying in the unsealed court documents that she witnessed Clinton and Epstein on the island at the same time, accompanied by two girls. “There was two young girls that I could identify,” she says. “I never really knew them well… It was just two girls from New York.” (She does not allege witnessing any wrongdoing on Clinton’s part.)
Epstein and Maxwell allegedly had “constant” orgies at his island in the Caribbean, Little St. James.
Guiffre claimed some of the young women involved in these orgies were as young as 15. “There’s a lot of girls that were involved. We weren’t on a first-name basis with each other. I wouldn’t be able to give you lists of names of girls. It was continuous,” she said.
Epstein and Maxwell communicated until much more recently than Maxwell previously claimed.
Maxwell has previously asserted that it had been more than 10 years since she had spoken with Epstein, but emails in the unsealed court records dispute this. In one email from 2015, Epstein urged Maxwell to “go outside, head high, not as an escaping convict” and “go to parties.” “You have done nothing wrong and I would urge you to start acting like it,” he said in the email.
Guiffre said she kept notes of everyone she’d had sexual contact with, but burned them in a bonfire.
In her deposition, Guiffre said that she’d started making a list in 2011 or 2012 of those she’d slept with during her time with Epstein, but burned it in a bonfire. “My husband and I were pretty spiritual people and we believed that these memories were worth burning,” she said.
Epstein would ask his victims to dress up according to his tastes.
In a three-way call with her lawyers, Giuffre described how Epstein would usually ask her to dress in “Gucci, Dole Gabbana, Chanel, things like that.” Occasionally, he would ask her to roleplay or wear a schoolgirl’s uniform: “I would go in and act like a little kid and we’d do roleplaying sexing.”
Epstein allegedly boasted about the ages of his victims. In one stomach-turning anecdote Giuffre shares with the lawyers, she mentions Epstein telling her that he had had 12-year-old French girls flown in for his birthday. “He was constantly bragging about girls’ ages or where he got them from or their pasts and how terrible their pasts were and how good he was making it for them,” she says.