List could be released as soon as Tuesday after deadline for objections to unsealing of names passes midnight Monday
Nearly 200 names connected to the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking conspiracy could be released by a New York judge as soon as Tuesday, exposing or confirming the identities of dozens of associates of the disgraced financier that until now have only been known as John and Jane Does in court papers.
A deadline for objections to the unsealing of the names passes at midnight on Monday, nearly nine years after victim Virginia Giuffre filed a single defamation claim against Maxwell, daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell, in 2015, that in turn produced the names in legal depositions.
A year later, in 2016, US district court judge Robert Sweet rejected Maxwell’s motion to dismiss the case, finding that “the veracity of a contextual world of facts more broad than the allegedly defamatory statements” and that Guiffre “was a victim of sustained underage sexual abuse between 1999 and 2002”. The parties settled out of court in 2017.
I can’t rule out “nothing” completely, with the knowledge I have. It’s absolutely something we should see, though. It will sketch out the whole picture in a way that allows people to exonerate themselves or be further implicated. If it’s specific enough for people to have alibis, then that’s interesting, and if it’s full of plausible allegations, then they could become more damning. Consider that the details of what people are “accused” is likely to vary - are they accused of being on a plane with other witnesses? Who is accused of having extensive opportunities to have committed abuses during their stay on the island? What was the pretense for their involvement with Epstein and Maxwell? It puts people in a position to explain what they did or did not know about Jeffrey Epstein at the time, and for those claims to be cross-checked, where possible. Close contacts of the accused may be prompted to add additional information from their recollections or records, if they learn that they had been lied to. Another possibility is that the allegations are frustratingly vague and don’t actually create a clear picture of any criminal behavior.
What knowledge do you have?