Former US President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Michael Jackson, and physicist Stephen Hawking are some of the high-profile names that have appeared in recently unsealed documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The documents reveal an email sent to his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in which he offers a reward to anyone who can disprove allegations by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre that Hawking took part in an "underage orgy".
"You can issue a reward to any of Virginia's friends, acquaints, family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false. The strongest is the Clinton dinner, and the new version in the Virgin Islands that Stephen Hawking participated in an underage orgy," reads the email sent to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
Giuffre, in a lawsuit, claimed that Epstein forced her to have sex in an underage orgy with the Professor. Hawking, who passed away in 2018, visited Epstein's private Caribbean island in 2006 for a conference. An image showing him at a barbecue on the island has now gone viral on social media.
However, he was not the only one who had attended the conference, which was bankrolled by Epstein, according to a report in The Independent. Hawking has not been publicly accused of any sexual misconduct.
The names of more than 150 people mentioned in the lawsuit had been kept sealed for years, but a US court last month ordered that there was no legal justification to keep them private. However, it needs to be noted that not all of them have been linked to wrongdoing. They were reportedly part of Epstein's famous and influential circle.
Epstein, who was arrested in July 2019 on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, was found hanged in his New York jail cell while awaiting trial. The only person who was punished in the case was Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
The unsealed documents contain 1,000 pages of depositions and statements. They also reveal that Clinton had reportedly flown on Epstein's private plane. Johanna Sjoberg, who had accused Epstein in her 2016 deposition, said that he "said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls".
Clinton's spokesperson denied having any involvement with Epstein in a statement in 2019. He notably had an affair with his 22-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky, during his first term as president. He was 49 years old at the time.
Giuffre also claimed that Clinton once arrived on the Caribbean island of Little St. James with a woman on each arm. The former US president has been named 73 times in the documents, Prince Andrew 67 times, and Maxwell appears over 200 times.
Sjoberg claimed that she also met Prince Andrew at Epstein's New York home. "I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap," Sjoberg said.
"And so then I sat on Andrew's lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine."
Prince Andrew quit public life in 2019 because of his friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of his royal patronages and military titles in January 2022 following allegations of rape and sexual abuse by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, which he has since settled out of court.