Court documents unsealed on Monday have described bombshell allegations that claim sex tapes were taken of Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Sir Richard Branson by paedophile US financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Emails written by Epstein victim Sarah Ransome to a reporter in 2016 outlined allegations that an unnamed friend of hers “had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson”.
Ransome claimed that these encounters had been filmed by Epstein – and that she herself had later seen the sex tapes.
A firm representing Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, highlighted the allegations to demonstrate Ms Ransome “manifestly lacks credibility”.
The claims were included in hundreds of documents that a US judge has ordered to be unsealed as part of a civil claim by Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, which was filed in 2015 and settled in 2017.
Despite the defamation case being concluded seven years ago, the Miami Herald successfully fought to make the names and documents associated with it public.
On August 10, 2019, guards found Epstein unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department Inspector General ruled that Epstein’s death was a suicide by hanging.
Epstein’s lawyers challenged the medical examiner’s conclusion and opened their own investigation, hiring pathologist Michael Baden.
Due to violations of normal jail procedures on the night of Epstein’s death, the malfunction of two cameras in front of his cell, and his claims to have compromising information about powerful figures, his death generated speculation and conspiracy theories about the possibility that he was murdered
