Reported by Edward Helmore

It has long been known that the disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein operated at the center of a globe-spanning network of the rich, famous and powerful but the documents released Wednesday were nonetheless shocking in revealing the sheer magnitude of his elite circle.

Through the prism of a defamation lawsuit involving allegations against the Wall Street “estate planner” Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the scale of their social network came into harsh focus.

The 2024-page document released by the US judge Loretta Preska has been sought since 2016. It may be only the first to flesh out the extraordinary web Epstein and Maxwell spun as they hosted party after party at homes across the globe and as they created a horrifying sex-trafficking network that preyed on teen girls.

The names littered throughout the depositions and legal correspondence that came up in the lawsuit – filed by Prince Andrew accuser Victoria Giuffre in 2015 – range from former US president Bill Clinton, whom one Epstein victim claimed she was told by Epstein “likes them young”, to Britain’s Prince Andrew, singer Michael Jackson, French hairdresser Frédéric Fekkai, “model scout” Jean-Luc Brunel, magician David Copperfield and acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking.

The documents released do shed some light on the circumstances of Epstein’s lifestyle, but they do not answer any of the pending questions about his financial arrangements with wealthy men, if any, and how he came to amass the $580m fortune at the time of his death.

Read full report: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/03/jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-unsealed-documents