\n<\/p>\n
Hillary Clinton<\/strong> had +300 odds. Jared Kushner<\/strong> was at +2,000. You could bet<\/a> more broadly on the presence of \u201cany current congressman.\u201d A several-years-old half-joke was spreading anew, and the gambling site BetOnline seemed to see an opportunity. In late December, the company listed high-profile politicians, actors, and athletes and their odds of showing up on what has come to be known, mostly through force of repetition, as \u201cthe Epstein list.\u201d<\/p>\n A few days earlier, a federal judge had ordered the unsealing<\/a> of about 240 documents related to a lawsuit that Virginia Giuffre,<\/strong> an outspoken victim of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s extensive sexual abuse, filed against Ghislaine Maxwell<\/strong> in 2015. After Maxwell, the financier\u2019s ex-girlfriend who would later be convicted of facilitating his predation, called Giuffre a liar, Giuffre sued the British socialite for defamation. They settled in 2017\u2014when Epstein was infamous but not yet at the saturation point of global notoriety\u2014and the case was largely sealed. Two years later, after reporting by the Miami Herald<\/em>\u2019s Julie K. Brown<\/strong> brought Epstein\u2019s crimes to their place at the center of a storm of continuing intrigue, Brown and the paper succeeded in an appeal to have materials from the Giuffre suit released. They were joined in the effort by right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich<\/strong> and attorney and longtime Epstein associate Alan Dershowitz.<\/strong><\/p>\n A first batch of documents was unsealed<\/a> in August 2019, the day before Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His arrest that July and the intrigue surrounding his death became a blockbuster international news story and turned him into an emblem for the sins of the wealthy and powerful. By the time US district judge Loretta Preska<\/strong> ruled last month that the names of 187 \u201cJ. Does\u201d who appeared in documents related to the Giuffre suit would be released, tabloid anticipation was fervent. The order, carrying a list of pseudonymous people and an invocation of sealed legal materials, compounded some of the prevailing senses simmering around the case.<\/p>\n \u201cBill Clinton<\/strong> to be unmasked as \u2018Doe 36\u2019 and identified more than 50 times in Jeffrey Epstein doc dump,\u201d read<\/a> one New York Post<\/em> headline that preceded the tabloid\u2019s live blog<\/a> about the unveiling of the list.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be coming out soon,\u201d New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers<\/strong> said with a grin on ESPN last week, tapping into the space the Does list had come to occupy in pop culture as he used it as fodder for his ongoing feud<\/a> with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel,<\/strong> who he falsely insinuated would be on the list. Kimmel threatened legal action, ESPN apologized<\/a>, and Rodgers said<\/a> in his next appearance on the network that he didn\u2019t mean to suggest that Kimmel was a \u201cP-word.\u201d Rodgers\u2019s accusation and Kimmel\u2019s response created their own sports-media news cycle that continued well into this week.<\/p>\n The notion of an \u201cEpstein list\u201d as hidden but singular evidence of elite malfeasance has taken a particular hold on the far right, where the involvement of Clinton adds to the perception of retributive potential. \u201cI\u2019m pleased that this court agrees with my calls for transparency and accountability on Epstein and his associates,\u201d Republican senator Marsha Blackburn<\/strong> wrote on X<\/a> after Preska\u2019s order. \u201cThere will be lots of names you\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/strong> wrote<\/a>. \u201cPedophiles belong in jail not on secret government lists.\u201d<\/p>\n BetOnline eventually removed its odds offerings, but by then the site had captured the tenor of the loudest expectations.<\/p>\n When Preska ordered the unsealing, she listed a rationale for the presence of each newly unredacted name that would appear in the documents. A few reasons appeared throughout: the Doe hadn\u2019t bothered objecting to the unsealing; there wouldn\u2019t be any salacious material about the Doe; the material about the Doe had already been covered in the press. In instances where the Doe\u2019s name remained redacted, it was often because they were an underage victim of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n Epstein\u2019s abuse took place over the course of decades, and he left behind scores of victims as he cultivated relationships with what could be called, without wading into conspiracy, a subset of the global elite: a former president, a future president, a British royal, an American retail billionaire<\/a>. The broad story of his crimes contains some significant remaining questions\u2014how did he get all his money, and how did he maintain his sway over the wealthy businessmen who bankrolled him or else stood by him?<\/p>\n But then there\u2019s the list. The details of Epstein\u2019s and Maxwell\u2019s lives have continued to provide red meat to conspiracists, and even acquired a kind of fashionability on account of the pair\u2019s brushes with sordid glamour. Interest in the scandal, with its mixture of wealth, fame, and sex trafficking, has often involved the idea that a break in the case would reveal the names of the powerful men to whom Epstein provided victims.<\/p>\n When the documents began to emerge last week, most of the names had appeared before in the last several years of Epstein coverage. The details largely echoed portions of what had already been known about his abuse. More often than not, the anticipated files were depositions of his victims.<\/p>\n As news outlets and online enthusiasts tore through the pages, the involvement of bold-faced names tended to stick out. Tabloids homed in on how one Epstein accuser, Johanna Sjoberg,<\/strong> claimed<\/a> in a 2016 deposition that \u201che said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.\u201d Clinton had been without objection<\/a> to the unsealing. In response to press inquiries this week, his spokesperson referred to a 2019 statement<\/a> saying that \u201cPresident Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.\u201d It added that Clinton had \u201cnot spoken to Epstein in well over a decade\u201d and that he had \u201cnever been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n