(NEW YORK) — The first batch of what is expected to be hundreds of sealed court filings pertaining to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein was made public Wednesday, and in the documents, it included arguments by attorneys for Virginia Giuffre — an alleged victim of Epstein — who sought to depose former President Bill Clinton as part of her defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
In the newly unsealed material, Giuffre’s lawyers wrote that Clinton was “a key person who can provide information about his close relationship with Defendant and Mr. Epstein.”
The document, dated June 14, 2016, marked the first time Giuffre’s attorneys indicated their desire to depose Clinton for his testimony, as ABC News previously reported. Giuffre’s lawyers had begun informal talks with Clinton’s attorneys five days earlier, on June 9, 2016, ABC News previously reported.
The now-unredacted document revealed specifically why Giuffre’s lawyers sought Clinton’s testimony.
“In a 2011 interview, Ms. Giuffre mentioned former President Bill Clinton’s close personal relationship with Defendant and Jeffrey Epstein. While Ms. Giuffre made no allegations of illegal actions by Bill Clinton, Ms. [Ghislaine] Maxwell in her deposition raised Ms. Giuffre’s comments about President Clinton as one of the ‘obvious lies’ to which she was referring in her public statement that formed the basis of this suit. Apart from the Defendant and Mr. Epstein, former President Clinton is a key person who can provide information about his close relationship with Defendant and Mr. Epstein and disapprove Ms. Maxwell’s claims,” the document said.
In response, Maxwell’s attorneys pointed out that “Each and every part of Plaintiff’s claims regarding President Clinton has conclusively been proven false,” according to another document unsealed Wednesday.
Giuffre had claimed to a reporter in 2011 that she had seen Clinton on Epstein’s private Caribbean island shortly after his presidency ended, had dinner with him and claimed to have witnessed Maxwell flying Clinton to the island in a “big, black helicopter.” Giuffre later disavowed witnessing the helicopter flight.
“With the record thus, Plaintiff’s claims about Clinton’s presence on the Island and the fully concocted story about the dinner party that occurred thereon totally debunked … the relevance of any testimony he might add is non-existent,” the newly-released document said.
Giuffre’s proposal to depose Clinton was denied by a federal judge in a still-redacted order, something ABC News previously reported.
Giuffre made no allegations of wrongdoing against Clinton. After Epstein’s arrest in 2019, Clinton’s spokesman denied that Clinton knew about Epstein’s crimes, denied Clinton was ever on Epstein’s private island and said the former president had not communicated with Epstein in more than a decade.
Wednesday’s unsealed documents are part of a long-settled defamation lawsuit Giuffre filed against Maxwell. Giuffre claimed she was a teen sex slave for Epstein and directed by him and Maxwell to have sex with powerful men.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled last month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal more than 150 names of “John and Jane Does” mentioned in the records. Preska had ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1.
Additional associates of Epstein’s, including Prince Andrew, are named in the documents.
Reacting to the release of the documents, Managing Partner of Boies Schiller Flexner Sigrid McCawley, counsel for Giuffre, said the public deserves to know more about what happened with Epstein.
“The public has wondered and many have rightly demanded to know how Epstein operated his vast, global sex trafficking enterprise and got away with it for decades. Questions of who enabled and facilitated him and who participated in an operation that resulted in unspeakable harm and devastation to the lives of countless girls and young women quickly surfaced,” the statement read. “Some of those questions have been answered; many have not. Some justice for the survivors has, indeed, been achieved; not nearly enough as hoped for and deserved. 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. The unsealing of these documents gets us closer to that goal.”
Late Wednesday night, Maxwell’s attorneys, Arthur L. Aidala and Diana Fabi Samson, also released a statement reading: “Ghislaine Maxwell took no position on the court’s recent decision to unseal documents in Giuffre v Maxwell as these disclosures have no bearing on her or her pending appeal.”
“Ghislaine’s focus is on the upcoming appellate argument asking for her entire case to dismissed,” their statement continued. “She is confident that she will obtain justice in the second circuit court of appeals. She has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence.”
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