Who’s not on the list? Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter. . . .?
ABC reports today “U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president’s name and more than 150 names other “John and Jane Does” mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1.
The documents stem from a 2015 civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein’s one-time paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim. Giuffre also accused Epstein and Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Prince Andrew and several other prominent men. Prince Andrew denied the allegations and claimed he could not recall ever meeting Giuffre. He later settled a lawsuit she filed against him.
Virginia Giuffre , the minor who filed the civil lawsuit for sexual abuse and trafficking, made no allegations of wrongdoing by Clinton, and there is no indication the sealed records contain evidence of illegal conduct by Clinton. But Giuffre’s claim that she met the ex-president on Epstein’s private Caribbean island emerged as a contentious issue in the litigation, which was settled in 2017. Maxwell contended Clinton had never been to Little St. James — as Epstein’s island was known — and assailed Giuffre’s claim as a fabrication that shattered her credibility.
According to reporting in 2021, one of Epstein’s pilots remembers Clinton, Trump, and Andrew flying on Epstein’s private jet on occasions.
Personal flight logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots — which surfaced in separate lawsuits against Epstein — showed that Clinton and his entourage had flown extensively on Epstein’s jumbo-jet to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei in 2002 and 2003. But none of the available records included the former president on a trip to Epstein’s island. (ABC)
According to a procedure established by Preska, attorneys for each of the “Does” were offered a preview of the court files containing their name before determinations were made about unsealing the records. Each person was afforded an opportunity to argue for keeping the records sealed. Clinton’s legal team, after reviewing the excerpts, did not lodge any objections to the publication of the documents, according to Preska’s order last month.
A spokesperson for Clinton declined to comment for this story.
Clinton’s association with Epstein was first noted publicly in 2002, after reporters learned of the former president’s journey that year on the mysterious multi-millionaire’s jet for a humanitarian mission to multiple African nations. Clinton told New York magazine through a spokesman at the time that “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”