Paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was ready to reward one of his victim’s friends if they could “prove her allegations false” – including that Professor Stephen Hawking participated in an underage orgy, court documents have revealed.
The names of more than 170 people who were either associates, friends or victims of Epstein are set to be made public following a US judge’s order last month.
The first tranche of documents was released on Wednesday evening with high-profile figures such as the Duke of York and former US President Bill Clinton featuring heavily.
An email from Epstein to disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell showed he was content for her to “issue a reward” to any of Virginia Giuffre’s friends to counter her claims, shortly after she filed a civil claim in the US in 2015.
The email read: “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.”
Also published among the court documents as part of Ms Giuffre’s civil claim against Maxwell was the transcript of the socialite’s videotaped evidence given under oath.
During her interview, known in the US as a deposition, Maxwell claimed she could only recall Prince Andrew on Epstein’s island once.
Andrew stepped down from public life after the furore over his friendship with Epstein and paid millions to settle a civil sexual assault case to Ms Giuffre, a woman he claimed never to have met.
The duke was cast out of the working monarchy and no longer uses his HRH style after Ms Giuffre, who was trafficked by Epstein, accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.
He strenuously denies any wrongdoing.
Asked whether any girls under the age of 18 were present on that one occasion, Maxwell replied: “There were no girls on the island at all.
“No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.
“Girls meaning, I assume you are asking underage, but there was nobody female outside of the cooks and the cleaners.”
In other documents, Maxwell could be seen sending an email in January 2015, shortly after a civil claim had been filed against her, in which she described herself as “out of my depth”.
She added: “I have already suffered such a terrible and painful loss over the last few days that I can’t even see what life after press hell even looks like – statements that don’t address all just lead to more questions… what is my relationship to Clinton? Andrew on and on.”
One site where the documents were being released on Wednesday evening crashed within minutes, warning that the server might be overloaded – prompting a tweet from Ms Giuffre which read: “We broke the website”.
The deposition of a woman named Johanna Sjoberg was also published as part of the documents.
She previously claimed Andrew touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside the US billionaire’s Manhattan apartment in 2001, while giving testimony in May 2016.
The incident is alleged to have taken place when Ms Giuffre and Ms Sjoberg, were at Epstein’s house off Fifth Avenue in New York.
Ms Sjoberg’s deposition made reference to a puppet being placed on Ms Giuffre’s breast at the same time – believed to be Andrew’s Spitting Image puppet.
Buckingham Palace previously said the allegations are “categorically untrue”.
During the same interview, Ms Sjoberg also said Epstein had told her that former President Bill Clinton “likes them young, referring to girls”.
Ms Sjoberg said: “I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton.
“I did not know they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article about them going to Africa together.”
Asked if Epstein had ever talked about the former president, Ms Sjoberg said: “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”
In 2019, Mr Clinton’s spokesman said he knew “nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to” and that the pair had not spoken “in over a decade”.
The spokesman also said Mr Clinton had never been to Epstein’s island, called Little St James, his ranch in New Mexico nor his house in Florida.
Another former US president, Donald Trump, also featured in Ms Sjoberg’s deposition after she said Epstein had called him and visited one of his casinos due to his private plane being diverted.
Ms Sjoberg said: “Jeffrey said, ‘Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to… I don’t recall the name of the casino, but… we’ll go to the casino.”
Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
The death was ruled a suicide.
Maxwell has been imprisoned since July 2020, despite numerous attempts from her defence counsel to have her released on bail.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the federal court in the Southern District of New York in June 2022.
The socialite indicated her desire to appeal shortly after her conviction with her lawyers claiming victims had “faded, distorted and motivated memories”.
Her appeal is currently scheduled to be heard in November next year.
