(NewsNation) — Jeffrey Epstein is back in the headlines now that his accomplice and former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, seeks to appeal her 2021 conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping the disgraced late financier sexually abuse teenage girls.
Maxwell’s appeal comes months after a federal judge ordered the public disclosure of the identities of more than 150 people mentioned in a mountain of court documents related to the late financier.
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide in 2019. He was awaiting trial for allegedly orchestrating a child sex trafficking ring along with Maxwell.
Here is a timeline of the criminal cases against Epstein.
Florida investigation launched into Epstein
March 2005: Police in Palm Beach, Florida, begin investigating Epstein after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she was molested at his mansion. Multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, would later tell police Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.
May 2006: Palm Beach police charge Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor. The county’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Barry Krischer, takes the unusual step of sending the case to a grand jury.
June 2006: The grand jury hears from only one accuser and indicts Epstein with one count of solicitation of prostitution. Accusations from other victims, many of whom were minors, are not reflected in the indictment.
July 2006: The relatively minor charge draws attention, including from Palm Beach Police leaders, who slam Krischer for giving Epstein special treatment. The FBI opens a federal investigation that involves multiple accusers in Florida, New York and elsewhere in the U.S.
Epstein avoids federal prosecution
2007: Federal prosecutors prepare an indictment against Epstein. But for a year, the financier’s lawyers engaged in talks with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, about a plea bargain that would allow Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. Epstein’s lawyers argued that his accusers are unreliable witnesses.
June 2008: Epstein pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from a minor. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, a year of community service and is registered as a sex offender.
Under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein served most of his sentence in a work-release program that allowed him to leave the jail during the day to go to his office and return to his cell at night.
Epstein released from jail
July 2009: Epstein is released from jail. For the next decade, multiple women who say they are Epstein’s victims wage a legal fight to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided, and hold him and others liable for the abuse.
In her lawsuits, one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, says Epstein and then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell set up sexual encounters with high-profile individuals starting when she was 17. This included royalty, politicians, academians, businessmen and other rich and powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. All of the men denied the allegations.
Federal investigation opened
November 2018: The Miami Herald revisited the handling of Epstein’s case in a series of stories focusing partly on the role of Acosta — who by this point is President Donald Trump’s labor secretary — in arranging his unusual plea deal. The coverage renews public interest in the case.
July 2019: Epstein is arrested on federal sex trafficking charges after federal prosecutors in New York concluded they weren’t bound by the earlier plea deal. Days after the arrest, Acosta resigns as labor secretary amid public outrage over his role in the initial investigation.
Epstein suicide
August 10, 2019: Guards find Epstein dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City. Investigators concluded he died by suicide.
Ghislaine Maxwell charged
July 2020: New York federal prosecutors charge Ghislaine Maxwell with sex crimes, saying she helped recruit the underage girls Epstein abused, sometimes participating in the abuse herself.
December 2021: A jury convicts Maxwell in multiple charges including sex trafficking, conspiracy and transportation of a minor for illegal sexual activity.
June 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Judge orders Epstein document unsealing
December 2023: A federal judge ordered the unsealing of a trove of court documents that would reveal the names of dozens of Epstein’s associates. Former President Bill Clinton is believed to be among the people named in the redacted filings, which could be released later this week.
January 2024: The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed that the documents will be unsealed on a rolling basis. The first batch of documents was unsealed Jan. 3. More documents were unsealed in the following days.
Questions about the millionaire pedophile remain unanswered even after the release of thousands of pages of court records. The documents received a lot of attention, but they shed little new light on the financier’s habitual sexual abuse of underage girls.
The final round of legal documents were released Jan. 9. They added few details to what was already known about Epstein’s crimes. They did not contain the explosive revelations or new identities of abusers that some had predicted.
Over 50 pages from Epstein’s passport files were secured by ABC News on Jan. 16 through a public records request to the U.S. Department of State, spanning from the early 1980s to 2019. The newly obtained records show extensive travels and passport requests from Epstein.
February 2024: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Feb. 29 signed a bill into law that would make more documents from the 2006 grand jury investigation into Epstein public. House Bill 117, which would become effective July 1, creates a narrowly tailored exception for a judge to order the release of the grand jury records from the 2006 investigation.
Grand jury transcripts can be released, according to the new law, if the subject of the grand jury inquiry is dead; if the investigation was about sexual activity with a minor; if the testimony was previously disclosed by a court order; and if a state attorney is notified.
Under the law, a judge could release the transcripts sooner than July as part of a lawsuit filed by the Palm Beach Post. In 2019, the newspaper sued the Palm Beach County state attorney and court clerk for a court order to unseal the grand jury proceedings and reveal why it returned only minimal charges.
Maxwell seeks to appeal conviction
March 2024: A U.S. appeals court in New York heard oral arguments March 12 in Maxwell’s 2021 conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. Maxwell’s defense team will argue she did not receive a fair trial and didn’t testify because she was treated poorly.
Grand jury records released
July 2024: A Florida judge released transcripts detailing 2006 grand jury testimony that accused Epstein of sexually assaulting numerous underage teenage girls at his Palm Beach mansion.
The records, which were under seal for 16 years, revealed that the Palm Beach County prosecutor, who had reinstated efforts to charge Epstein for months, painted the alleged underage victims as prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves and liars.
In the transcripts, one of Epstein’s housekeepers stated that “hundreds of girls” passed through the house, sometimes three a day. Additionally, there are audio recordings and footage of investigators interviewing some of these underage girls, who provided explicit details of their interactions with Epstein.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an order to release the files by July 1, reported the Palm Beach Post, which sued for their release in 2019.
