Formerly sealed documents in Maxwell-Epstein case ordered released
According to Wayne Madsen Report,
More details of Epstein operation anticipated in newly-unsealed federal court documents.
New York
Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has ordered released sealed documents from a 2016 defamation lawsuit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the now-indicted former assistant to international underage female sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Although the civil case was settled in 2017 it generated a number of documents, including emails, as well as depositions by Giuffre and other abuse victims. Maxwell sought to block the release of the sealed documents on the grounds that they would embarrass her. Judge Preska ruled, “the court finds any minor embarrassment or annoyance resulting from Ms. Maxwell’s mostly non-testimony … is far outweighed by the presumption of public access.”
Preska ruled that some of the sealed documents will not be released because they include protected medical records and the depositions of several “Jane Does” who were abused and trafficked by Epstein but wish to remain anonymous.
The sealed documents reportedly provide additional details concerning the activities of Epstein; Maxwell; and Jean-Luc Brunel, the French owner of two Epstein-financed modeling agencies, Karin Models and MC2 Model Management. The latter maintained offices in New York, Miami, and Tel Aviv. Brunel also helped establish two additional modeling agencies, The Identity Models in New York and 1Mother Agency in Kyiv, Ukraine. Brunel is the subject of an international criminal investigation involving the FBI and French National Police. Brunel has not been seen in public since the suspicious Manhattan jail cell death of Epstein in August 2019. Brunel was named in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell. Giuffre said Epstein had bragged to her in claiming that he had slept with over 1,000 of “Brunel’s girls.”
In 1989, Brunel and his brother, Arnaud Brunel, founded the Next Management Company modeling agency, a subsidiary of the Next Management Corporation, which was founded the previous year as a New York corporation. The individual listed as the New York Department of State process or agent for the Next Management Corporation is none other than Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Treasury. Mnuchin, in typical Trump administration fashion, has denied knowing that he was the agent for the Brunel brothers’ company or even having ever met either of the Brunels. However, WMR conducted a search of the New York Department of State (DOS) corporation filings and discovered Mnuchin listed as the DOS Process for not only Next Management Corporation but its follow-on identity, Next Time Corporation. Mnuchin cannot honestly claim he had no knowledge of a business relationship with the Brunels that spanned at least a decade. The 115 East 57th Street Manhattan address listed by Mnuchin is two blocks from the Trump Tower at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. Former Next Management models reported that they regularly witnessed young girls being the target of predatory men at dinner parties and clubs sponsored by the modeling agency. Mr. Mnuchin could not have forgotten about these sorts of episodes, unless he was one of the predators.
It has been reported that Trump Model Management and Trump Management Group LLC, also known as T Management and T Models, Trump’s former modeling agency, maintained a working relationship with Brunel’s agencies, particularly the Miami office of MC2 Model Management. The Trump agency was accused by its foreign hires of failing to obtain proper U.S. work visas on their behalf. Trump Model Management abruptly closed down after Trump’s inauguration as president. Trump Model Management had represented Melania Knavs Trump, who Epstein claimed to have introduced to Trump in 1998 at a Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Club in Times Square. The party was sponsored by Paolo Zampolli, the co-owner of Metropolitan Models. Zampolii has boasted that it was he who introduced Knavs to Trump calling Epstein’s claim to the contrary, “fake news. BS.” Zampolli had been an associate of the late John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management and the developer of the “supermodel” concept. Casablancas’s agency had represented Ivanka Trump. Casablancas, who was a friend of Donald Trump and lived in Miami, died in 2013 at the age of 70, while in Rio de Janeiro. Former Elite models alleged that the agency would send models, some between the ages of 13 and 16 to photo-shoots without a chaperone and with little more than a map and subway fare. Other Casablancas models alleged to the Huffington Post that the late supermodel agent established a culture of compliance with sexually predatory behavior. Casablancas’s obituary in The New York Times stated the following about the model mogul and friend of Trump: “Mr. Casablancas was frequently criticized for having sexual relationships with young models. His public affair with Stephanie Seymour in 1983, when he was 41 and she was 15, ended his second marriage, to Jeanette Christjansen, a former model and the 1965 Miss Denmark.” Casablancas was not the only underage predator at Elite. Gerald Marie, the head of Elite’s Paris agency, allegedly raped on multiple occasions a 17-year-old model named Carré Otis.
Zampolli served as Director of International Development in a joint venture with the Trump Organization. Zampolli currently holds diplomatic passports for Dominica and Grenada and is accredited by both countries to the United Nations.
Trump, Melania Knavs, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell posed for a photograph at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida on February 12, 2000. Through his close relationship with Victoria’s Secret’s owner Les Wexner, Epstein called the shots on the retailer’s choice and use of models.
This story is developing pending the unsealing of court documents scheduled for July 30.
Labels: Steven Mnuchin — New York Times — Jeffrey Epstein — Donald Trump — Wayne Madsen Report
