Three troves of previously sealed court documents related to deceased billionaire financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were released by a federal court in New York City late last week.

Contained in the unsealed documents are the names of more than 150 people, including high-profile and powerful individuals within the capitalist establishment—politicians and celebrities, as well as less well-known figures from corporate, academic and scientific circles.

The 180 exhibits, totaling 2,644 pages of mostly unredacted records, were released by Manhattan US District Judge Loretta Preska. The documents are court records from the defamation lawsuit brought in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, against the billionaire’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre, who was a teenager when Maxwell facilitated and participated in her abuse by Epstein and others, filed the suit after Maxwell called her a liar. In a criminal prosecution in 2021, Maxwell was convicted of conspiring with Epstein in his sex-trafficking operation and is now serving a 20-year sentence in a Tallahassee federal prison.

Judge Preska ruled in December that the Giuffre lawsuit documents should be unsealed and made public. They comprise depositions, incident reports, court filings, emails and other documents, and include the names of witnesses, accusers, members of Epstein’s staff, members of law enforcement and other people linked to Epstein.

The documents provide little new information about Epstein’s abuse of under-age girls. It has long been established that he and elite individuals associated with him engaged in depraved and criminal activities for decades without being arrested or prosecuted.

According to Judge Preska, most of the information in the newly unsealed documents had already been made public and the papers do not include salacious material about individuals other than Epstein. As reported by CBS News, “Much of the information has been previously reported, and many of those whose names are mentioned are not accused of any wrongdoing.”

However, the documents—largely derived from the testimony of women who were victimized by Epstein from the 1990s up to his first arrest in Florida on sex charges in 2007—provide further evidence that the socialite and billionaire wealth manager was well connected to a wide range of political, corporate and entertainment celebrities during the first two decades of his criminal sex trafficking operation.

In his 2007 prosecution, Epstein was charged in a 50-page indictment involving the Palm Beach Police Department and an FBI investigation that included 34 minors. The charges against Epstein involved allegations of sexual abuse of under-age girls as young as 12, some of whom were transported to his private residences in Paris for lavish parties attended by his elite guests.

In the end, through the intervention of US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta, Epstein was given a slap on the wrist. A non-prosecution agreement was negotiated by his legal team, including Alan Dershowitz, which enabled the sex offender to plead guilty to state charges of “procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18.”

When asked later about his intervention, Acosta said he offered a lenient plea deal because he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and was “above his pay grade.” Acosta said he was instructed to “leave it alone.”

Jeffrey Epstein came to prominence within elite circles during the unprecedented rise in US social inequality in the 1990s. These were years of an offensive against jobs, living standards, working conditions and social programs under the Democratic Party administration of Bill Clinton.

Enormous fortunes were made by the capitalist elite, while past social concessions to the working class associated with the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s were stripped away by both Democratic and Republican administrations, with the complicit assistance of the trade union bureaucracy.

Epstein, a former New York City private school mathematics and physics teacher, went into private equity at Bear Stearns in 1976, through his acquaintance with the CEO of the investment firm, Alan Greenberg. After working his way into the Wall Street elite, Epstein became a well known figure in the lucrative and parasitic world of hedge fund management. Among his business activities during this time was a startup with connections to the Israel Defense Forces.

Epstein worked his contacts relentlessly while he developed his sex trafficking operations in the 1990s. In his 28,000-square-foot townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Epstein hosted lavish parties and ingratiated himself with the rich and famous, who were for the most part well aware of his sordid abuse of under-age girls.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested in New Jersey after being charged by a New York City grand jury with sex trafficking “dozens” of under-age girls in Florida and New York. He was refused bail and jailed in Manhattan. While awaiting trial, he was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019 under suspicious circumstances.

Although New York City authorities moved quickly to conclude that Epstein had committed suicide by hanging, there is substantial conflicting evidence that suggests the billionaire sex trafficker was murdered in his Manhattan jail cell.

The list of political and state figures named in the new documents includes Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Richardson, Ehud Barak (former Israeli prime minister), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Louis Freeh (former FBI director). Ultra-wealthy individuals named include Hyatt Hotels billionaire Tom Pritzker, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and the founder of Limited Brands, Les Wexner.

Among the celebrities named are Oprah Winfrey, David Copperfield (magician), Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Spacey, George Lucas, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Campbell, Chris Tucker, Bruce Willis and Camron Diaz. The named lawyers, scientists and academics include Alan Dershowitz, Stephen Hawking, Marvin Minsky (artificial intelligence pioneer) and Noam Chomsky. The list also includes the names of many of Epstein’s accusers and victims.

The new documents contain testimony and depositions given by Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s teenage sexual abuse victims. She describes an encounter with Prince Andrew at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion where she was groped by the British royal.

Regarding former President Bill Clinton, Sjoberg stated, “[Epstein] said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”

In an email to a journalist in 2011, Virginia Giuffre said that when Vanity Fair (VF) was preparing an article for publication, “B. Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficking articles about his good friend J.E.” Clinton has publicly denied these accounts.

Sjoberg said she met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. Asked whether she massaged Jackson, Sjoberg said: “I did not.” Sjoberg stated that David Copperfield was a friend of Epstein and that he attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and “did some magic tricks.”

Sjoberg mentioned Donald Trump in connection with a flight from Palm Beach, Florida in 2001 that included Epstein, Giuffre and a few others. When Epstein’s plane was unable to land in New York due to a storm, they had to land in Atlantic City.

Sjoberg recalled Epstein saying, “Great, we’ll call up Trump” and go to his casino. Sjoberg wasn’t asked if they met up with Trump that night, although they did go to one of the Trump casinos. Sjoberg said she was never asked to give Trump a massage.

There is evidence that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least once, and video emerged in July 2019 of Epstein and Trump partying together at Mar-a-Lago in the early 1990s. A housekeeper testified that Trump dined at the Palm Beach home of Epstein but never received any massages there. During the years in question, both Trump and Epstein were supporters of the Democratic Party.