Virginia Giuffre sends a Christmas greeting to 170 people who would soon be linked to Epstein.
Virginia Giuffre, who accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse when she was underage and sued his ex-lover Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew, derided the hundreds of other Epstein associates who are set to be revealed publicly at the start of the new year.
“Finally we are hearing members of the US government senators about the need for transparency and a call to arms for accountability!!” she wrote on Twitter. “There’s going to be a lot of nervous ppl over Christmas and New Years, 170 to be exact, who’s on the naughty list?”
The remark was in reaction to a post by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who has been a vocal supporter of publicly naming Epstein’s guests and connections in Congress. Blackburn published a piece on Fox News Digital on Tuesday about the judge’s order to unseal dozens of names previously hidden in court documents by January 1, inviting Giuffre’s reaction.
“This wouldn’t be possible without the Honourable Judge Preska,” Giuffre said in a statement.
Giuffre could not be reached for comment right away.
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Giuffre’s 2015 case against Maxwell was presided over by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, and the parties reached a settlement in 2017. However, the court has continued to distribute and unseal papers since its closure.
Preska ordered the release of records earlier this week that are expected to name scores of persons, including associates, victims, investigators, and journalists who covered the case. Some of the names will remain sealed, including those of child victims who never spoke publicly about the case and a person who, according to the judge, was incorrectly identified as an alleged perpetrator by a reporter.
However, Epstein’s inner circle continues to pique the public’s interest. The financier has contacts to a wide range of powerful people, including politicians, Hollywood personalities, top academics, and the prince.
The judge granted a two-week stay to allow anyone on the list to file an appeal.
At least one person begged the court not to reveal her identity, claiming that doing so would put her in danger of bodily harm. Her name was not among those ordered to be disclosed next month, but her attorney asked the judge on Wednesday for more time to submit papers in support of keeping his client’s name concealed.
Preska explained his rationale in a 51-page order issued on Monday. The order stems from a 2015 lawsuit filed by Giuffre and Epstein’s madam, Maxwell. The case was settled in 2017, although the judge hinted that the names will not be concealed indefinitely during hearings in 2021 and 2022.
Some of the names in the documents have been redacted because they belong to people who have either spoken publicly about their connections to Epstein, have already been recognized in other court documents, or were named during Maxwell’s criminal prosecution.
Epstein passed away in a federal prison cell in New York in 2019. Maxwell is serving a 20-year term for sex trafficking, and Giuffre has founded an organization to help victims of trafficking.
The fight to expose the names of Epstein’s clients and those who rode on his private plane is still ongoing, and it reached a climax in Congress last week when Blackburn and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., accused Democrats of “stonewalling” their requests for such information.
“It appears that bad actors within our government are going to great lengths to protect the pedophiles who took Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet,” Blackburn wrote in a piece for X last week. “I will not give up on revealing their identities.” Every name on that list deserves to be known to the American people.”
