The list of Jeffrey Epstein’s associates is set to be made public in early January, after a federal judge in New York ordered a vast unsealing of court documents.
According to media reports, Judge Loretta Preska ordered the documents unsealed in the since-settled defamation lawsuit that Epstein’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, brought against Epstein’s one-time paramour Ghislaine Maxwell back in 2015.
More than 170 people, including former employees, co-conspirators, innocent associates and victims, are likely set to be identified when the trove of court documents is made public.
The judge has given those individuals 14 days to appeal the decision, according to Monday’s order. Preska set the release of the documents for Jan. 1.
However, the names of a number of Epstein’s accusers — identified only as “Jane Does” — will remain redacted, after the judge ruled that revealing their names in some of the documents would “disclose sensitive information regarding an alleged minor victim of sexual abuse who has not spoken publicly and who has maintained his or her privacy.”
According to ABC News, Preska also ruled that since some of the individuals set to be named have given media interviews, their names should not stay private.
Giuffre sued Maxwell in 2015, claiming that the British socialite defamed her by telling the media that her claims of sexual abuse by Epstein and Maxwell were “obvious lies.”
In her lawsuit, Giuffre alleged that Maxwell recruited her for sex with Epstein when she was just a teen and that her sexual servitude to the financier lasted for years. She also accused the pair of directing her to have sex with a number of other high-profile people, including Britain’s Prince Andrew.
The lawsuit was settled in 2017, just before the trial was set to begin.
Prince Andrew has denied the allegations and settled a sexual assault lawsuit from Giuffre last year for an undisclosed sum.
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan federal jail in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
In 2021, Maxwell was convicted of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual encounters with Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
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