In newly unsealed documents, Virginia Giuffre claims that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked her to politicians, princes, and a high-flying financier, among others.
By Kate Briquelet, Katie Baker, Justin Miller, Pilar Melendez, Tracy Connor
Virginia Giuffre, who says that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to powerful people for erotic massages and sex, claimed in a 2016 deposition that Maxwell directed her to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Britain’s Prince Andrew (whom she has accused before), wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former senator George Mitchell, now-deceased MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, as well as “another prince,” a "foreign president," and the owner of a “large hotel chain” in France.
None of the men named in the deposition have been charged with a crime or even sued in civil court in connection with the Epstein case. The deposition represents accuser Giuffre’s allegations, and the court documents unsealed on Friday did not contain any corroboration or further details, though many documents remain sealed.
Brunel’s attorney Joe Titone declined to comment. Prince Andrew and Buckingham Palace have previously and vehemently denied Giuffre’s allegations. “Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations in the unsealed court records, which are demonstrably false and defamatory. The Dubins have flight records and other evidence that definitively disprove that any such events occurred," a spokesperson for the Dubin family told The Daily Beast on Friday.
A spokesperson for former Gov. Bill Richardson, Madeleine Mahony, told The Daily Beast on Friday,“These allegations and inferences are completely false. Governor Richardson has never even been contacted by any party regarding this lawsuit. To be clear, in Governor Richardson’s limited interactions with Mr. Epstein, he never saw him in the presence of young or underage girls. Governor Richardson has never been to Mr. Epstein’s residence in the Virgin Islands. Governor Richardson has never met Ms. Giuffre."
Mitchell did not respond to The Daily Beast by press time.
The revelation comes after a federal appeals court ordered the release of the sealed documents in a lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell, the British publishing heiress whom Giuffre says was Epstein’s madam. Maxwell has rejected allegations that she has acted as a procurer for Epstein and denied she facilitated Prince Andrew's acts of sexual abuse and was Epstein’s madam.
Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and model Naomi Campbell in 2002. - Mark Mainz/Getty
On July 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the summary judgment materials in Giuffre’s 2015 lawsuit to be unsealed—with the first documents released to the public todayMaxwell hit back at Giuffre and denied the allegations, prompting Giuffre to sue her for defamation. The suit was settled in 2017 on confidential terms.
In a videotaped deposition—excerpts of which were included in the documents unsealed Friday—Giuffre said that Maxwell would send her to have erotic “massages” and sexual encounters with various powerful men—from a hotel owner in France (an incident she places “around the same time that Naomi Campbell had a birthday party”) to politician Richardson to Dubin, a financier who is married to Epstein’s former girlfriend Eva Andersson-Dubin.
In the court documents, Giuffre claims she was sent by Maxwell to have sex with the owner of a large hotel chain, “one time in France … I believe it was around the same time that Naomi Campbell had a birthday party.” She says they had sex “in his own cabana, townhouse thing. It was part of a hotel. Jeffrey was staying there. Ghislaine was staying there.”
“I was instructed by Ghislaine to go and give him an erotic massage,” she testified. “She used the words erotic massage?” Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger asks. “No, that’s my word,” Giuffre replies. “The word ‘massage’ is what they would use. That’s their code word.”
“Where were you and where was Ms. Maxwell when she directed you to go have sex with Marvin Minsky?” Menninger asks.
“I believe it was the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jeff’s—sorry, Jeffrey—Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Giuffre says, admitting she can’t remember the year or how old she was at the time.
Prince Andrew has long denied allegations he had sex with underage girls supplied by Jeffrey Epstein. - Ian Forsyth/Getty
“I am definitely sure there is,” Giuffre replies. “But can I remember everybody’s name? No…look I’ve given you what I know right now. I’m sorry. This is very hard for me and very frustrating to have to go over this. I don’t—I don’t recall all of the people. There was a large amount of people that I was sent to.”
In a separate exchange, Giuffre testifies, “"They instructed me to go to George Mitchell, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, another prince that I don't know his name. A guy that owns a hotel, a really large hotel chain, I can't remember which hotel it was. Marvin Minksy."
“There was, you know, another foreign president, I can’t remember his name. He was Spanish. There's a whole bunch of them that I just—it’s hard for me to remember all of them. you know, I was told to do something by these people constantly, told to—my whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy. Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”
The men named by Virginia Giuffre are all friends or acquaintances of Epstein who moved within his world of power and influence.
Dubin and Andersson-Dubin were two of Epstein’s closest friends. Eva, a former Miss Sweden who married Glenn in 1994, was a critical factor in Epstein’s reintroduction to New York high society after the financier’s Florida conviction. The Dubins are fantastically wealthy—Forbes puts their fortune around $2 billion—and Glenn Dubin is a founder of Highbridge Capital, as well as the charitable Robin Hood Foundation (JFK Jr. had a seat on its board). They live in a Fifth Avenue apartment once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and are regulars on the Palm Beach circuit that Epstein once dominated.
The accusation against Glenn Dubin is even more disturbing considering that Eva vowed to a probation officer that she was “100% comfortable” with Epstein around her own children, while noting she was aware of his conviction of sex with a minor. Epstein gave money to Eva’s breast cancer charity, and to two organizations linked to one of the Dubin daughters—Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club (the Dubins are also donors) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. Epstein was also an investor in Highbridge in 1998, according to New York Magazine.
Glenn Dubin and his wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin - Lars Niki/Getty
Epstein also had longstanding ties with Richardson. The former governor, DNC chairman, and presidential candidate—who also served as President Clinton’s Energy Secretary and UN Ambassador in the late ’90s—was reportedly a guest of honor at Jeffrey Epstein’s secluded Zorro Ranch outside of Stanley, New Mexico, and appears in Epstein’s “little black book” of contacts. Giuffre has previously claimed that Epstein transported her to New Mexico as his underage “sex slave.”
Richardson returned $50,000 in campaign donations from Epstein after the financier’s 2007 plea deal in Florida.
Florida.
Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson - Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty
Another politician accused by Giuffre is George Mitchell, the former Democratic leader of the Senate and Bill Clinton’s Special Envoy for Northern Ireland (and later President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East). Mitchell built a renowned legacy as a statesman. In a 2003 profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair, the former Senator and Army counterintelligence officer praised Epstein: “He has supported some philanthropic projects of mine and organized a fund-raiser for me once. I would certainly call him a friend and a supporter.” The feeling was mutual, with Epstein regarding Mitchell as “the world’s greatest negotiator.”
Dershowitz also claimed in a deposition that Mitchell was Epstein’s Palm Beach house guest.
In addition to his political connections, Epstein’s ties to scientists have also been under intense scrutiny since his arrest on sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The late MIT cognitive scientist and “father of AI” Marvin Minsky was part of a glittering set of academics that Epstein collected as friends. In 2012, as Epstein was trying to rehabilitate his image, he touted his foundation’s sponsorship of an academic conference organized by Minsky.
Dershowitz singled out Minsky as someone who had allegedly seen young ladies around Epstein. As he told The Daily Beast, “These people [the young women] were seen not only by me. They were seen by Larry Summers, they were seen by [genetics professor George] Church, they were seen by Marvin Minsky, they were seen by some of the most eminent academics and scholars in the world. There was no hint or suggestion of anything sexual or improper in the presence of these people.” (Minsky died in 2016.)
Marvin Minsky is named by a Jeffrey Epstein accuser in newly unsealed court documents. - Steamtalks/WikiCommons
The French modeling scout has also long faced accusations that girls were drugged and raped in his employ. He was particularly close to Epstein, according to court records in civil suits against the financier. The subject of a famous 60 Minutes expose on sexual abuse in the modeling industry, Brunel has been linked to the apartments on Manhattan’s East 66th Street where Epstein allegedly housed models; he flew on Epstein’s plane frequently; and he liked to make himself at home at the financier’s Palm Beach mansion, according to testimony from Epstein’s former employees.
Epstein allegedly invested $1 million in Brunel’s agency MC2, which victims’ lawyers say was used to import young girls from around the world for Epstein and his pals. (Brunel has denied that Epstein invested in his company.)
The most high-profile man to be accused by Giuffre is, of course, Britain's Prince Andrew.
Andrew—who flew on Epstein’s plane and vacationed with him in Thailand—met the financer through Maxwell. The royal has been fighting allegations for years that he caroused with Giuffre when she was underage. The Duke of York and the palace have vehemently denied Giuffre’s claims.
Several years ago, Giuffre told the Mail on Sunday that Epstein loaned her out to the prince and other famous friends for sex, and claimed that she had to report back with potential blackmail material for Epstein. (She said Andrew liked to suck her toes).
During her first alleged rendezvous with the prince, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell “asked Andrew how old he thought I was and he guessed 17 and they all kind of laughed about it and Ghislaine made a joke that I was getting too old for Jeffrey. She said, ‘He’ll soon have to trade her in.’”
Giuffre also said Andrew participated in an orgy with underage girls on Epstein’s so-called “pedophile island.” (Andrew and Buckingham palace deny these claims.)
A 2001 picture of Andrew, with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, surfaced alongside her bombshell story a few years ago. In 2007, another young woman named Johanna Sjoberg told The Daily Mail that Andrew had groped her at a party at Epstein’s mansion.
Sjoberg repeated those claims in a videotaped deposition included in the just-unsealed court documents. She said that she sat on Prince Andrew's lap at Epstein's East 71st Street palace, and that Andrew touched her breast after using a puppet to show what he would do on Giuffre's body (with the puppet touching Giuffre's breast).
Andrew, known as “Randy Andy” in the British press for his penchant for partying, has previously denied Sjoberg’s claims.
In the deposition, Sjoberg said that Maxwell approached her in the winter of 2001 on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic College, offering a job of answering phones, which she did on her first visit to Epstein’s Palm Beach residence. On the second visit, she met a young woman (whom The Daily Beast is not naming), who took Sjoberg up to Epstein’s bedroom. They both massaged Epstein. When he got up from table, she says, the other young woman got on the table naked and showed Sjoberg “moves that he [Epstein] liked.” Sjoberg says she was then massaged by Epstein and the young woman, nude.
Sjoberg says Maxwell referred to the young woman as her slave.
Maxwell’s job, Sjoberg said, was “to find other girls that would perform massages for him and herself.”
Epstein also allegedly told Sjoberg “he needed to have three orgasms a day. It was biological, like eating.”
In another deposition included in the unsealed documents, Tony Figueroa, Epstein's former bodyguard, testified that Giuffre told him about threesomes with herself, Maxwell, and Epstein involving “strap-ons,” and claimed that Epstein wanted Giuffre to have sex with Prince Andrew, Maxwell, and “all the other girls.”
Maxwell's lawyers hit back hard at Giuffre's claims in the unsealed documents, painting her as a troubled young woman with a history of substance abuse. They attacked her on being mistaken on the date she started working at Mar-a-Lago, and called on former boyfriends who said they didn't remember Giuffre mentioning Maxwell to them (although at least one did say she talking about giving massages to “Jeff”). Maxwell's team also noted that Giuffre received money for her stories that appeared in the British press, and accused her of trying to embellish her claims.
Epstein is currently facing sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges in New York. He pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
This article was originally published by "Daily Beast" -
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