More Jeffrey Epstein-related records unsealed Monday in an old lawsuit involving the prolific abuser included explosive allegations about secret sex tapes featuring some of the prominent people in his orbit that were later retracted.
Hundreds of documents totaling more than 1,000 pages have been unsealed over the last week in Manhattan Federal Court in a now-settled defamation lawsuit against Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, brought by Virginia Giuffre, one of the deceased financier’s most vocal accusers.
Judge Loretta Preska ordered the filings to be made public last month, finding there was no legal basis to keep them hidden. Most of those whose names were made public were not accused of wrongdoing and had already been publicly identified.
Monday’s batch included rehashing some of the most salacious claims to come out in the litigation — the existence of sex tapes Epstein made of his high-profile pals. The woman who made the allegations, Epstein accuser Sarah Ransome, ultimately retracted them.
In October 2016, Ransome emailed a reporter saying she wanted to retract all of the allegations “and walk away from this,” the filings unsealed Monday show. A 2019 article in the New Yorker reported that Ransome, by her own admission, made up the tapes “to draw attention to Epstein’s behavior, and to make him believe that she had ‘evidence that would come out if he harmed me.’”
Ransome, who could not be reached for comment, has long alleged she was abused by Epstein. She read a victim impact at Maxwell’s 2022 sentencing following her conviction for enabling Epstein’s abuse.
The mountain of documents unsealed over the last week contain few details that were not already known. The most consequential papers in the case were unsealed before Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial in 2019.
