New Epstein files reveal 187 names linked to sex trafficking conspiracy | US News

Nearly 200 people linked to Jeffrey Epstein during his years of child sex abuse have been named.

Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Stephen Hawking are among the 187 individuals named as associates of the late billionaire, who ran a sex trafficking ring with associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Their names were recently revealed after US Judge Loretta Preska ruled last month that documents naming the individuals be unsealed and made public.

In one document, a woman named Johanna Sjoberg claimed Prince Andrew touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside the US billionaire’s Manhattan apartment in 2001, while giving testimony in May 2016.

Ms Sjoberg’s deposition made reference to a puppet being placed on Ms Giuffre’s breast at the same time – believed to be Andrew’s Spitting Image puppet.

Buckingham Palace previously said the allegations are ‘categorically untrue’.

During the same interview, Ms Sjoberg also said Epstein had told her that former President Bill Clinton ‘likes them young, referring to girls’.

Ms Sjoberg said: ‘I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton.

‘I did not know they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article about them going to Africa together.’

Following the release of documents, Virginia Giuffre, one of the paedophile financier’s victims, posted to X, noting one site where the files were being released had crashed.

She wrote: ‘We broke the website’.

Another document, an email from Epstein to Maxwell, showed he was content for her to ‘issue a reward’ to any of Virginia Giuffre’s friends to counter her claims, shortly after she filed a civil claim in the US in 2015.

The email read: ‘You can issue a reward to any of Virginia’s friends, acquaints, family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false.

‘The strongest is the Clinton dinner, and the new version in the Virgin Islands that Stephen Hawking participated in an underage orgy.’

The names of the associates were previously redacted, replaced with ‘John Doe’ or ‘Jane Doe’ in public records of the case.

Also published among the court documents as part of Ms Giuffre’s civil claim against Maxwell was the transcript of the socialite’s videotaped evidence given under oath.

During her interview, known in the US as a deposition, Maxwell claimed she could only recall Prince Andrew on Epstein’s island once.

Andrew stepped down from public life after the furore over his friendship with Epstein and paid millions to settle a civil sexual assault case to Ms Giuffre, a woman he claimed never to have met.

The duke was cast out of the working monarchy and no longer uses his HRH style after Ms Giuffre, who was trafficked by Epstein, accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.

He strenuously denies any wrongdoing.

Asked whether any girls under the age of 18 were present on that one occasion, Maxwell replied: ‘There were no girls on the island at all.

‘No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.

‘Girls meaning, I assume you are asking underage, but there was nobody female outside of the cooks and the cleaners.’

In other documents, Maxwell could be seen sending an email in January 2015, shortly after a civil claim had been filed against her, in which she described herself as ‘out of my depth’.

She added: ‘I have already suffered such a terrible and painful loss over the last few days that I can’t even see what life after press hell even looks like – statements that don’t address all just lead to more questions… what is my relationship to Clinton? Andrew on and on.’

A legal deadline for raising objections to names being revealed expired at midnight local time on Monday.

Judge Loretta Preska said many of the individuals have already been identified, either in media reports or in the trial which convicted Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex trafficking.

One of these was Bill Clinton, the former US president, whom ABC News named as J Doe 36.

Giuffre has not accused Clinton of wrongdoing but previously claimed to have met him on Epstein’s island in the Caribbean.

Clinton has strongly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. His representatives have said he made four trips to Europe, Asia and Africa on Epstein’s plane for charity work but never visited his island.

Flight logs which have been made public confirmed this account.

Statements made by Maxwell to the defamation case, which was settled in 2017, helped lead to the later criminal trial against her.

The judge presiding over the case concluded that Giuffre was ‘a victim of sustained underage sexual abuse’ and had given factual evidence showing ‘Maxwell assisted and participated in Giuffre’s trafficking’.

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