Judge declassifies explosive documents about Jeffrey Epstein with unconfirmed photographs and accusations

With the greatest of caution, with all the tweezers and hot cloths and with a lot of perspective. This is how you have to read the 17 new declassified court documents – which arrive after almost 200 more – that Judge Loretta A. Preska has allowed to see the light this January 8, relating to the network of abuses set up by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in the early and mid-2000s. This Monday, judicial petitions, email exchanges, photographs and some statements from victims have come to light that – always taken with great caution, also due to their origin – include explosive accusations with unverified indirect testimonies about some of the characters who moved in Epstein's circle.

Some of these documents talk about former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as the businessman Richard Branson and the omnipresent Prince Andrew of England, third son of the late Elizabeth II and brother of King Charles III.

Of the 17 documents, two are the most important and for different reasons, but with a person in common: Sarah Ransome, a woman who claims to have been a victim of the plot and to have several friends who were also victims. However, she herself retracted her statements years ago. Hence the special care in these texts, which strongly accuse key figures.

In document number 7, the first of them and of 29 pages, Ransome gives his testimony and provides documents and photographs about his experience. In the images on the 29 pages you can see Ghislaine Maxwell (both alone and with the French modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel, who committed suicide in prison in Paris while awaiting trial), Epstein riding a quad bike or with friends and alleged victims, very young women. All of them are on Little Saint James, the tycoon's island, presumably in 2006.

Ransome here talks about how there were many girls, very young, who rotated at Maxwell's request to give massages (the code term for non-consensual sexual relations) to Epstein and his colleagues. Both she and her friends, the complainant says, tried to flee and hide around the island (and even swim away from it) to avoid being called.

Ransome explains (and has repeated it in many interviews over the last decade) that he entered the network because he was studying in Edinburgh and, unable to pay the tuition, he went with his last savings to New York to try to make contacts. and being able to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a prestigious fashion school in the city, and that was indeed where she met Maxwell and Epstein. They were going to help her get in and make the payments, until she became one of her sex slaves.

Always, according to their version, the couple recruited “girls from very disadvantaged families, they gave them accommodation, food, money for transportation, private planes…” And they also paid for their studies, which is why they stayed: “So if I didn't maintain relations with Jeffrey, I would go live on the streets and starve in New York, and my dream of training in one of the best fashion centers in the world would disappear.” She claims to testify before the judge so that her story is known and that these abuses end. However, the defendants always accused Ransome of being motivated by money and making up her story.

The most delicate question comes in the penultimate document, the 16th. It contains Ransome's most explosive testimony, where she accuses Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and businessman Richard Branson of having been part of Epstein's clientele network and of practicing sex with minors. However, precisely these statements, obtained from Ransome's emails, are brought to light by Epstein's lawyer, Professor Alan Dershowitz, showing them as an example of lies and the victim's doubts.

“The disqualification of the emails is requested to challenge Ms Ransome's false and defamatory allegations that, among other things, she had sexual relations with the intervener when she was 23 years old. The accusations are flatly false. Professor Dershowitz has never met or had contact with her, was not her attorney, and certainly never had a sexual encounter with her. Before this action, he had never heard of Mrs. Ransome. Her testimony was made up out of thin air. “Ransome’s testimony also contains a number of other inflammatory claims about the sexual proclivities of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and other prominent people,” she reads.

Indeed, those statements below are inflammatory. Sarah Ransome claims that her email has been hacked, that she has spoken to Russian media, that she has images and, above all, videos: “I will make sure that the entire planet sees those photos and those recordings and I will release them on Wikileaks! “I'll take down Epstein and his bunch of shitty cronies all by myself!” “Clinton and Trump must pay for what they did to us, as must the rest of the men involved in that sordid inner circle.”

When referring to possible abuses committed by this group of powerful men, the complainant does not speak in the first person, but rather refers to “a friend” who told her her version, which, therefore, would not be first-hand. “My friend had sexual relations with Clinton, Prince Andrew [de Inglaterra] and Richard Branson, the sex tapes were, in fact, filmed on each occasion separately… Finally, I managed to persuade her to send me some of the video images she kept, implicating the three men… I have made backup copies of the recordings on several USB sticks and I have sent them safely to different places in Europe.”

However, in a long text The New Yorker in 2019, Journalist Connie Bruck claims that Ransome herself confided in her that these quotes did not exis
t. “Ransome told me that she had invented the existence of these recordings to draw attention to Epstein's behavior and to make him believe that she had 'proof of what would happen if he hurt me,'” Bruck said.

Another of Ransome's accusations – which, we must not forget, are used in the trial against him, taken as an exaggeration – harshly attacks former President Donald Trump: “[Otra] friend… One of the many girls who had sexual relations with Donald Trump… She confided in me her friendship casual with Donald. Trump seemed to have feelings for her and he told me that he couldn't stop talking about how he liked her nipples. Donald Trump liked to touch and suck on her nipples until they were raw. One night, while we were showering together, he showed me his nipples. They seemed to hurt like hell, they were red and swollen and I remember grimacing looking at them. “I also know that she had sex with Trump at Jeffrey's New York mansion with some regularity, because I once met Jen for coffee, right before she was going to meet Trump and Epstein together at his mansion.”

As read in that judicial brief, this is taken from an email from Sarah Ransome with which, for this group of lawyers, “Ransome's credibility is fatally appreciated.” “For this reason, the deposition transcripts alone leave an incomplete impression and therefore give false impressions of Ransome and her outrageous claims.”

At the moment, none of those involved have commented anything on the matter, beyond Branson's spokespersons, who refer to what was already said in 2019 by the victim in the New Yorker: “Ransome admitted that he invented the existence of the tapes. “We confirm that his claims are unfounded and without any basis.”

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