The LATEST Epstein Files

Fact vs Fiction. Bill Clinton and Vanity Fair...

OK, so another bunch of filings were released this evening pertaining to the civil litigation between Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The reason this is so important is because it was the depositions and discovery in this civil suit which was settled in 2017, that wound up being the backbone of later federal criminal indictments for sex crimes against Jeffrey Epstein and later, Ghislaine Maxwell. (Epstein died before going to trial and Maxwell is serving a 20 year sentence).

First, a small detail. There is at least one factual error in these filings. I know this - because it’s about me!

I’m listed on a witness list compiled in 2016 by Giuffre’s attorneys, along with Annie and “Marie” [sic] Farmer. In each case the qualifying reason is: “Has knowledge of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trafficking conduct and interaction with underage minors, including Virginia Giuffre”.

I wish that were actually true, because, if it were, maybe I could have nailed Epstein’s butt to the wall back in 2002/3 when I profiled him for Vanity Fair.

Unfortunately I never heard of Virginia until her story was first reported in the Mail on Sunday in 2011, and then again in 2015. And I never spoke to her or had any contact with her until 2019 when I was working for CNN and I interviewed her.

The only Epstein victims I heard about, met or knew of directly in 2016 were the Farmer sisters, as is by now, well documented. And, based on public records, they would not have any first-hand knowledge of Virginia or her abuse either back in 2016 because Maria Farmer worked for Epstein in New York in the mid 1990s - and she left years before Virginia first encountered him and Maxwell in Palm Beach in 2000.

Anyway, I have always wished I had met Virginia in 2002. History would have been different, I hope. The irony of the timing is that I was interviewing Epstein and being threatened and stone-walled by him and Maxwell about the Farmers, while Virginia fled his clutches to Thailand. And he was simultaneously abusing dozens of other women and children, who now have names and faces, in the horrific ways described in these filings.

It’s sickening.

Two other things worth mentioning in this second batch of filings. I was interested to see the name of the supermarket magnate Ron Burkle on the witness list.

No suggestion of wrong-doing by Burkle, or by any of the names listed, but, given I am trying to piece together parts of a jigsaw puzzle, so I am trying to connect any dots: Burkle was close to the late Steve Bing, a wealthy Los Angeles-based film producer I also profiled for Vanity Fair (he is the father of Elizabeth Hurley’s son, Damian).

Bing, whom I found extremely likable, committed suicide by jumping from the 27th floor of a luxury apartment building in June 2020. There was a flurry of speculation in the media (never substantiated) as to whether it had anything to do with Epstein, whom he had known. (Epstein had died in jail the summer before and Maxwell would be arrested days later).

Burkle was also close to Bill Clinton who has said he had absolutely no knowledge of any of Epstein’s sex crimes.

Intriguingly in these new filings Virginia writes in an email that she’d heard that “B. Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex trafficking articles about his good friend,” Jeffrey Epstein.

If that happened, I did not know about it.

What I knew first-hand from an eyewitness fact-checker, as I’ve already documented, was that Epstein himself appeared in the offices of Vanity Fair while my piece was going through edits and fact-checking.

And what I also knew firsthand is that my good friend and former colleague, the late John Connolly, a retired NYPD cop whose name also comes up in these filings because he co-wrote a book, Filthy Rich, about Epstein with James Patterson, (also my co-writer) was stopped by Vanity Fair from pursuing leads he had from sources in the Palm Beach police department in 2006.

If that had anything to do with Clinton, he never told me.

But he did tell me he was really bummed to be told to drop his research in 2006.

Standby for more …