The Filing
In mid-December 2023, Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York set January 1, 2024, as the date a long-contested batch of sealed court records would finally become public. The case was Giuffre v. Maxwell, Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell, and the fight over access to its files had been running since 2018, when the Miami Herald first intervened in court. The unsealing took place on January 3, 2024, the eighth round of disclosures in that fight, which court officials described at the time as likely to be the last, though a court spokesperson also said the day’s batch was probably only a first stage, with more names expected on a rolling basis.
The first batch made public that day ran to roughly 40 exhibits across hundreds of pages. The next day, The Black Vault, an online archive run by researcher John Greenewald, compiled the material into a single 943-page, 23-megabyte PDF and published it, after other hosting sites reportedly buckled under traffic. That exact page count and file size come from The Black Vault’s own posting and have not been independently confirmed elsewhere.
What the Pages Say
The filings name roughly 150 people whose identities had previously been redacted. Among them: Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor), Michael Jackson, David Copperfield, Stephen Hawking, modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Clinton’s name appears more than 50 times. In one deposition, an unnamed accuser recalled Epstein remarking that Clinton “likes them young,” referring to girls, a secondhand statement attributed to Epstein by the witness, not an allegation made against Clinton elsewhere in the record.
Elsewhere, witness Johanna Sjoberg described Epstein saying he would “call up Trump” about a planned trip to a casino, a brief mention with no further detail attached. Sjoberg’s deposition also describes an April 2001 visit to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, during which she said Prince Andrew touched her breast while posing for a photograph, and a separate incident involving a puppet made in his likeness. The documents additionally set out, for the first time publicly, the terms of the 2017 settlement between Giuffre and Maxwell.
Disclosure, Not Determination
Preska’s order decided who gets to read the record, not what the record proves. The judge made no ruling on the truth of any statement inside the filings, and no finding of wrongdoing attaches automatically to any of the roughly 150 names. A name sits in an unsealed deposition because someone said it under oath, or wrote it in a document later entered as an exhibit, in a civil suit between two private parties.
Only Epstein and Maxwell have ever faced criminal charges connected to Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women. Maxwell, convicted in 2021, was sentenced the following year to 20 years in prison for aiding that abuse. Preska’s order governs access to the paperwork; it says nothing about guilt.
Why Most Names Are There
Most of the 150 names reached the page through routine mechanics: a transcript records who a witness says she met at a dinner, a flight log lists who was aboard a plane, a phone record shows a call placed. Sjoberg’s testimony that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach home but did not massage him, or that she met Copperfield at a dinner there, is exactly this kind of entry, incidental, undetailed, carrying no accusation.
The filings themselves note that being named in the suit does not equate to being accused of wrongdoing. Dershowitz shows the distinction from the other direction: Giuffre had named him as an abuser in earlier court papers, then said in 2022 that she “may have made a mistake” in doing so. The 943 pages hold all of this at once, names dropped in passing, at least one accusation since withdrawn, and testimony that was never retracted at all.
What the Pages Don’t Spell Out
The record stops short of context in specific, nameable places. The remark about Clinton is recorded only as something an accuser said Epstein had said; nothing in the filing describes what, if anything, backed it up. The Trump reference is a single line about a planned trip, with no account of whether the trip happened. The material involving Prince Andrew runs longer, spanning several pages of Sjoberg’s deposition, but the broader context and outcome are not laid out within this particular release. In each case the transcript simply stops; nothing in the record fills the gap, and nothing here should be read as if it did.
What Might Still Be Sealed
Two individuals, identified only as Doe 107 and Doe 110, were still fighting to keep their identities sealed: Preska granted Doe 107 a 30-day extension to argue she faced a risk of physical harm in her home country, while Doe 110 argued his association with Epstein had already been widely reported. Alleged minor victims were permitted to remain confidential throughout. Whether further material beyond those two pending appeals remains sealed is not addressed in the documents reviewed here.
No Consequence, Documented
The 943 pages attach no consequence to a name. Appearing in a federal civil filing, even more than 50 times, triggers no automatic legal exposure, and the record does not indicate what, if any, consequence follows for any of the roughly 150 people named. Clinton’s representatives said they did not object to the unsealing. Even the total count is unsettled across outlets, with some reporting roughly 150 names and others closer to 170, depending on how later releases are tallied.
On the Record Afterward
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing related to the allegations in the filings. Maxwell’s attorneys said in a statement that she “took no position” on the unsealing, that the disclosures had no bearing on her pending appeal, and that she “has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence.” The Black Vault said it was hosting the full document set because of “immense public interest” and to ensure reliable access after other platforms reportedly failed under demand. These are statements made about the unsealing, not findings contained inside it.
The Shape of What’s Known
What sits in the public record now is unusual in a specific way. Roughly 150 names are verifiably present in a federal court filing, and that much can be checked against the document itself. Almost everything past that, what the mentions amount to, what if anything followed, whether more pages remain sealed, stays open. Treating a name’s presence in the file as proof of what that person did is a step the filings themselves do not support. The 943 pages are real, dated, and public, and they tell us precisely who was named. For now, that is where the documented record runs out.