By The lawyer for multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein says more court documents detailing the sex predator’s actions and names of associates will be released in the coming days after the bombshell disclosure of an initial set of files.
“This is just the beginning batch,” the attorney, Sigrid McCawley, told NBC News hours after the first tranche of 40 case files was unsealed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday night.
The documents contained the names of Epstein associates such as Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain, billionaire Glenn Dubin, Michael Jackson, magician David Copperfield and more people.
The mere presence of their names in the files does not mean they were necessarily accused of abusing women or facilitating that abuse.
“There’s a lot more to come,” McCawley said. “There’s a significant amount left for sure.”
“And as we’ve seen, in this case, truth is stranger than fiction. So we learn more each time about how the sophisticated trafficking operation happened for so many decades and how many people were involved,” said McCawley, who represents Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre and other victims.
“It was vast, it was significant. And it harmed literally hundreds of young women. So you’re going to start seeing more of how that happened, who knew about it and what was going on,” McCawley said.
The court documents being unsealed are part of a case file for a lawsuit that Giuffre filed years ago against Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who acted as a procurer of young women for Epstein, her one-time boyfriend.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking underage girls.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence on charges related to facilitating Epstein’s rampant sexual abuse of women.
Many of the names disclosed in the first set of court documents being released were previously known to have some kind of connection to Epstein and Maxwell.
Epstein was known for years for socializing with rich and powerful businessmen, celebrities and other high-profile people.
Prince Andrew, nearly two years ago, reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre, who had sued him for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was under the control of Epstein and Maxwell. Andrew has denied her claim.
In a deposition unsealed Wednesday in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell, another Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg, testified that during a visit to Epstein’s house in New York, Andrew put his hand on her breast, and Maxwell or Epstein put the hands of a puppet that looked like Andrew on “Virginia’s breast.”
Sjoberg elsewhere in that deposition was asked about Clinton by Giuffre’s lawyer McCawley.
“Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?” McCawley asked.
Sjoberg responded, “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”
Clinton has never been accused of sexual misconduct with women or girls connected to Epstein.
A spokesman for Clinton, when asked for comment by NBC News, referred to a statement issued on the former president’s behalf in 2019 that said he “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
In the same statement, a spokesman said Clinton had not spoken to Epstein “in well over a decade.”
McCawley, in her interview Wednesday night, lauded Giuffre for her court fight with Maxwell, which led to the disclosure of the documents, and charges against Epstein and Maxwell.
“Virginia is an incredibly strong human being. She has been through so much through this journey,” McCawley said.
“When I started with her almost 10 years ago, she was resilient in wanting to have truth and justice,” the lawyer said. “And I think that this is really a shining moment bringing light to this issue. And having people recognize what not only she went through, but so many other young individuals and having that justice and people acknowledge what happened is really powerful for her.”
Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:
