Jeffrey Epstein’s death ends the criminal case against him, but his powerful friends and associates may not have heard the last of it.
US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman said the investigation of Epstein’s alleged conduct, including a conspiracy charge, remains ongoing, and Attorney General Bill Barr similarly said the case will continue against anyone who was complicit with Epstein.
“Any co-conspirators should not rest easy. The victims deserve justice and they will get it,” Barr said.
In addition, Epstein’s accusers asked a federal judge on Monday to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement that Epstein reached with prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in Florida a decade ago, which would give authorities “greater power” to go after his alleged co-conspirators.
Given that ongoing investigation, CNN took a look at the notable figures connected to Epstein who have been named in sworn testimony, as well as the major political figures with ties to him.
Unnamed assistants
The federal indictment against Epstein says that he ran a trafficking enterprise in which he sexually abused dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005 at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. He also paid some of his victims to recruit other victims, the document states.
He was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors, and he had pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The indictment specifically alleges Epstein worked and conspired with employees and associates who facilitated his conduct by, among other things, contacting victims and scheduling their sexual encounters with him.
The roles of three employees are laid out in the indictment, though they are not personally identified.
“Employee-1,” based in New York, was directed by Epstein to communicate with victims to arrange their visits to his New York City mansion, the indictment says. This employee also sometimes asked the victim-recruiters to bring a specific underage girl for Epstein, the indictment states.
“Employee-2” and “Employee-3” were both assistants who worked for Epstein and both were also responsible for scheduling sexual encounters with victims ahead of his visits to his Palm Beach residence, according to the indictment.
It’s unclear why the assistants were not named in the documents.
Other unnamed employees have similarly been noted in a draft version of a lawsuit that was expected to be filed by Jennifer Araoz, who said she was raped by Epstein when she was 15.
CNN usually does not name possible sexual misconduct victims, but is identifying Araoz because she came forward to speak publicly on a television news program and is named in the lawsuit draft.
Her draft complaint targeted Epstein as well as unidentified women called the “Recruiter,” the “Secretary” and the “Maid,” whom it dubs Jane Does 1, 2 and 3. The draft complaint said that the recruiter facilitated her “grooming” to be sexually assaulted by Epstein, and that the secretary and the maid would give her money after her visits to Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell
A series of documents unsealed last week accuse Ghislaine Maxwell, the British daughter of the late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, of assisting Epstein in his sexual abuse.
At the heart of the documents are allegations Virginia Roberts Giuffre made in a 2015 defamation case. Giuffre said Epstein kept her as a “sex slave” and that he was assisted by Maxwell. Testimony from another woman in those documents also alleged abuse at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell.
The case was settled in 2017.
An attorney for Maxwell did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on Friday. Maxwell and her representatives have previously denied she engaged in sexual abuse or sex trafficking.
In the court filings, Maxwell and her attorney portray Giuffre as an unreliable narrator, pointing to errors in certain dates and figures she provided. Giuffre has said the errors were mistakes.
David Boies, an attorney for Giuffre, said Friday that her lawsuit “exposed for prosecutors, and now the public, the scope and scale and ugliness of the Epstein/Maxwell sex trafficking ring.”
Les Wexner
Epstein’s longtime associate was Les Wexner, the CEO and founder of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. After Epstein’s arrest on federal charges last month, Wexner acknowledged that Epstein was his former personal money manager and that he served as a trustee of the Wexner Foundation, the CEO’s charitable group.
He said he severed ties with Epstein 12 years ago and denied knowledge of his criminal behavior.
“I would never have guessed that a person I employed more than a decade ago could have caused such pain to so many people,” Wexner wrote in a letter to L Brands employees. “My heart goes out to each and every person who has been hurt.”
Their connections ran deep, and Wexner gave Epstein “sweeping powers over his finances, philanthropy and private life,” The New York Times reported.
Epstein even tried to get involved in the recruitment of models for Victoria’s Secret’s popular catalog, the Times reported. That troubled executives at the company, which used talent agencies to scout models. Wexner was alerted by executives and reportedly said he would handle the issue, but Epstein’s involvement in trying to attract models continued, the Times reported.
L Brands’ spokesperson said the board of directors has “engaged outside counsel to conduct a thorough review” at their direction.
“While Mr. Epstein served as Mr. Wexner’s personal money manager for a period that ended nearly 12 years ago, we do not believe he was ever employed by nor served as an authorized representative of the company,” an L Brands (LB) spokesperson said in a statement Friday.
Wexner has accused Epstein of misappropriating “vast sums of money” from him and his family, according to a letter to Wexner Foundation members. Wexner told members of his Ohio-based charitable group that he discovered the missing funds after cutting ties with Epstein in 2007.
“This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now,” said the letter, which was not signed by Wexner or dated.
One of Epstein’s accusers said Epstein sexually assaulted her in Wexner’s home, according to an affidavit filed in a New York court in April as part of a defamation lawsuit against attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Alan Dershowitz
Giuffre has accused Dershowitz, the high-profile attorney who was part of the legal team that negotiated Epstein’s 2007 plea deal, of sexually abusing her.
Dershowitz has denied her claims and accused her of fabricating the allegations against him. He said in a statement that Friday’s release of documents “categorically proves that Virginia Roberts (Giuffre) never had sex with me.”
In April, she filed a separate defamation lawsuit against him, saying that he made “false and malicious” statements about her when he accused her of lying in making her accusations against him.
That case is ongoing, and Dershowitz has filed a motion to dismiss.
Prince Andrew
Giuffre has said that Epstein forced her to perform sex acts with a number of prominent men, including Prince Andrew, Duke of York, in 2001. In addition, another woman who said Epstein and Maxwell abused her said she was forced into sexual acts with Prince Andrew at Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, where Giuffre participated as well, according to the unsealed documents.
In response, a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said: “This relates to proceedings in the United States, to which The Duke of York is not a party. Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
In a statement to CNN last month, the spokesperson said, “The Duke of York accepts it was unwise to have met Mr. Epstein in December 2010. The Duke has not met with Mr. Epstein since.”
Donald Trump and Bill Clinton
Among Epstein’s powerful associates are presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
However, on July 12, Trump said that he threw Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club years ago.
“Jeffrey Epstein was not somebody that I respected. I threw him out. In fact I think the great James Patterson, who’s a member of Mar-a-Lago, made a statement yesterday, that many years ago I threw him out. I’m not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein,” he said.
A spokesman for Clinton said in a statement last month that the former president took four trips on Epstein’s airplane in 2002 and 2003. The statement said they also had one meeting in a Harlem office in 2002 and that Clinton made a brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a Secret Service detail.
“President Clinton 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,” Clinton’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, said in a statement posted to Twitter.
“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade,” the statement adds, “and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Bill Richardson and George Mitchell
Finally, the documents unsealed on Friday in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell include allegations that Giuffre was instructed by Maxwell to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former US Sen. George Mitchell, among others.
In a statement Friday, Mitchell called the claim false, adding: “I have never met, spoken with or had any contact with Ms. Giuffre.”
A spokeswoman for Richardson called Giuffre’s allegation “completely false.”
“To be clear, in Governor Richardson’s limited interactions with Mr. Epstein, he never saw him in the presence of young or underage girls,” spokeswoman Madeleine Mahony said. “Governor Richardson has never been to Mr. Epstein’s residence in the Virgin Islands. Governor Richardson has never met Ms. Giuffre.”
CNN’s Erica Orden, Kara Scannell, David Shortell, Rob McLean, Jordan Valinsky, David Goldman and Christina Alesci contributed to this report.
