New York - The third batch of the unsealed documents focussing on the wrongdoings of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was released on Friday afternoon stirring yet another media frenzy. According to CNN, the third batch comprised over 1,300 pages of victim testimonies along with other crucial information. The unsealed document followed hundreds of pages of documents which were released on Wednesday and Thursday with more expected to be released in the near future.  

The documents that were released to the public on Friday did not appear to include any new revelations about Epstein's sex trafficking but did touch upon the sex convict's association with disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The newly released batch also included more disposition excerpts from Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s procurer – and Johanna Sjoberg, one of the late financier’s many accusers, CNN reported. 

The unsealed files are part of a settled 2015 civil defamation lawsuit bought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Epstein and her partner Ghislaine Maxwell. In the lawsuit, Giuffre accused Epstein of sexually abusing her and accused Maxwell of aiding the abuse. The released documents stemmed from the December 18 court verdict from US District Judge Loretta Preska, which ordered the documents to be publicly available. 

Epstein's association with Weinstein

According to CNN, in the third set of documents, the name of the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein appeared in a 2005 handwritten note left for Epstein. The note, dated  March 1 2005, comprised a telephone message left for Epstein that indicated Weinstein attempted to call Epstein that morning. “She had on the phone Mr. Harvey Weinstein,” the message reads. The memo was among 200 such written phone messages. While there is no implication of wrongdoings by Weinstein in the released documents, the film producer's association with Epstein was not a new revelation. 

In a book titled “Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” Brad Edwards, Giuffre’s lawyer at one point elucidated Weinstein’s involvement in Epstein’s world. However, in one of the excerpts, Edwards wrote that Epstein ended his relationship with Weinstein after he acted too aggressively with one of his “favourite girls.”

What else were there in the documents

The third batch of controversial files included a list of search terms for Maxwell’s electronics as part of the evidence-gathering process. The document included names such as “Clinton”, and “Andrew”, and nouns such as “schoolgirl” and “gerbil”. While Former US President Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were mentioned multiple times in the documents, they were not accused of any sort of wrongdoing as of now. It is important to note that Giuffre and Maxwell settled their civil suit in 2017, but some court documents remained sealed until now. According to CNN, most of the documents from the suit were unsealed in 2019 - one day before the financier died by suicide in jail. Meanwhile, Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking and similar charges for procuring teenage girls for Epstein. She is still serving her prison sentence.