Virginia Roberts Giuffre is pictured with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in London, 2001. (Credit: public domain)
A trove of court documents unsealed Friday detail allegations by an alleged victim of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein that while working as a teenage locker room attendant at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort nearly two decades ago she was recruited to give Epstein massages that often involved sexual activity.
The roughly 2,000 pages of records released by the Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals also show the same woman, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, appears to have claimed she had sex with a series of prominent men — including former politicians — at Epstein’s direction while working as a staff masseuse for the investment adviser, who eventually came under investigation in 2006 for sex trafficking over his involvement with teenage girls.
That probe wound up in a controversial plea deal where federal prosecutors in Florida agreed not to file charges against Epstein in exchange for him pleading guilty in 2008 to two state prostitution-related felonies. He served only about 13 months in county jail, much of it with permission to work from his office during the day.
Epstein was found dead in his cell Saturday by apparent suicide, multiple media outlets reported.
In deposition excerpts made public Friday, Giuffre said she was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 when she was approached by Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell about giving massages to the wealthy investor, who owned a mansion in Palm Beach not far from the Trump resort.
“Where in the spa were you when you were approached by Ghislaine Maxwell?” Maxwell’s attorney Laura Menninger asked at a May 2016 deposition.
“Just outside the locker room, sitting where the other girl who works there usually sits,” Giuffre replied. “I was reading a book on massage therapy. … She noticed I was reading the massage book. And I started to have chitchat with her just about, you know, the body and the anatomy and how I was interested in it. And she told me that she knew somebody that was looking for a traveling masseuse. … If the guy likes you then, you know, it will work out for you. You’ll travel. You’ll make good money.”
(…) The documents released Friday come from a federal lawsuit Giuffre filed against Maxwell in New York in 2015, alleging that she facilitated Epstein’s abuse of her and other young girls. Giuffre, like other alleged victims, gave up her right to sue Epstein in exchange for a financial settlement linked to the 2008 plea deal. However, the settlement did not preclude litigation against others.
Maxwell denied the allegations and insisted that she was unaware that any of the masseuses working for Epstein were underage. However, she settled the suit for an undisclosed sum after a district court judge ruled in March 2017 that the case should go to trial.
The records released under the 2nd Circuit ruling are a subset of those filed in connection with Giuffre’s suit against Maxwell. Only portions of the relevant depositions were made public Friday, complicating efforts to interpret some of the witnesses statements.
The appeals court ordered more records to be reviewed for release by a district court judge, but that process is expected to take some time.
The court battle has lingered over the past two years as several parties pressed for more of the court record to be unsealed.
(…) Epstein, who was arrested last month in New Jersey as he arrived on a private plane from France, was denied bail.
The newly released court records show Epstein invoked his right against self-incrimination when asked various questions in the Giuffre suit, including about whether Maxwell first encountered Giuffre at Mar-a-Lago. “Fifth,” Epstein said, apparently referring to the Fifth Amendment.
The unsealed files don’t appear to include any allegation that Trump had sex with Giuffre or other women working for Epstein.
Giuffre also denied aspects of a reporter’s claim that she said: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s. He didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me. He’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’”
“’Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s.’ That part is true. ‘He didn’t partake in any’ of — any sex with any of us but he flirted with me.’ It’s true that he didn’t partake in any sex with us, but it’s not true that he flirted with me. Donald Trump never flirted with me,” Giuffre clarified later.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump told reporters at the White House after Epstein’s arrest last month. “I had a falling out a long time ago, I’d say maybe 15 years. … I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
In a comment to New York Magazine for a 2002 profile of Epstein, Trump called the financial whiz “a terrific guy” and acknowledged that he likes women “on the younger side.”
The documents released Friday include Giuffre’s employment records from Mar-a-Lago, showing she was paid $1866.50 by the resort in 2000. The court files also include a letter of recommendation Trump wrote for Giuffre’s father, who worked in maintenance at the resort and helped her get a job there.
Flight logs for Epstein’s private planes show Trump as a passenger on at least one flight, in January 1997 from Palm Beach to Newark.
The logs and depositions of Epstein’s pilots also detail former President Bill Clinton’s use of Epstein’s planes to travel around the world for the Clinton Foundation and to make paid speeches.
“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 spokesman Angel Urena said last month.
“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.” (Read more: Politico, 8/9/2019) (Archive)