abcnews | Former President Clinton, who ABC News has learned is identified as "Doe 36," is mentioned in more than fifty of the redacted filings, according to court records. Several of those sealed or redacted entries are focused on an effort by Giuffre's lawyers in mid-2016, first reported by ABC News, to subpoena the two-term Democratic president for deposition testimony about his relationship with Epstein.
According to portions of the court record that were not sealed, Giuffre's legal team initiated informal discussions with attorneys for the then-unnamed witness on June 9, 2016. That was a few days after the former president's wife, Hillary Clinton, clinched the Democratic nomination for president.
Representatives for Giuffre did contact the former president's attorneys in 2016 about a potential deposition, a person familiar with the situation told ABC News. Clinton's lawyers responded that his testimony would not be helpful to Giuffre because, the person said, the former president had never been on Epstein's island, as she had claimed.
Maxwell called the move to question Clinton "utter nonsense" and a "transparent ploy by [Giuffre] to increase media exposure for her sensational stories through deposition side-show," her attorney Laura Menninger wrote, according to an unredacted section of a court filing.
Giuffre's legal team, in contrast, described the proposed testimony of Clinton as "highly relevant" and "important to the fundamental claims and defenses" in the case. The request was ultimately denied by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet, in a redacted ruling in late June 2016.
Giuffre's lawyers pressed the Clinton issue again at a hearing in March 2017, six weeks before a trial was scheduled to begin. According to a publicly available transcript, Giuffre's team was then seeking to preclude Maxwell's side from presenting testimony suggesting that Clinton hadn't been on Epstein's island. Her attorneys argued it would be "inherently unfair" to Giuffre because they had not been permitted to ask the former president if he had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein's private island estate was known.
"You did not allow us to depose him because you said it was irrelevant," McCawley told Judge Sweet. "So now we're in a position where at trial they want to put forth that information against my client, and I don't have an under-oath statement from that individual saying whether or not he actually was," she added.
Maxwell's attorneys, according to the transcript, told the court Maxwell was prepared to take the stand and testify that Clinton was never on the island.
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