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What specific high-profile figures did Virginia Giuffre name in her 2015 defamation lawsuit?
Executive summary
Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 litigation primarily named Ghislaine Maxwell (defamation suit) and publicly accused high‑profile men including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz in related 2015 filings and affidavits; she also had prior civil filings tied to Jeffrey Epstein and later suits that reiterated those names (Giuffre v. Maxwell; Giuffre’s 2015 affidavit implicated Prince Andrew and Dershowitz) [1] [2] [3]. Coverage is uneven across documents: court dockets and appellate opinions confirm the Maxwell defamation case, while contemporaneous unsealed affidavits and reporting connect Giuffre’s 2015 statements to accusations involving Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz [1] [2] [3].
1. The 2015 lawsuit that is most often cited: Giuffre v. Maxwell — a defamation case
In 2015 Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation in federal court in New York, claiming Maxwell had called her allegations “obvious lies”; that defamation action produced extensive sealed discovery and later appellate litigation over access to court filings (Giuffre v. Maxwell, No. 15‑cv‑7433) [1]. Justia’s appellate summary and docket material identify Maxwell as the defendant in the 2015 suit and describe the litigation’s focus on whether Maxwell’s statements called Giuffre a liar [1].
2. Which high‑profile men appear in Giuffre’s 2015 filings or contemporaneous affidavits
Available documents and reporting tie Giuffre’s 2015 court filings and sworn affidavits to allegations naming Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz. Wikipedia’s summary of Giuffre’s filings notes her January 2015 Florida court papers stated Epstein trafficked her to Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz; Giuffre’s affidavit was later stricken from one federal case but the allegation is repeatedly referenced in reporting [2] [3]. The Guardian and other outlets also trace that Giuffre’s 2015 public statements and later suits reiterated allegations about Prince Andrew and mentioned Dershowitz among other men she said were involved [4] [3].
3. The Epstein settlement and “other potential defendants” — a complicating legal backdrop
Giuffre’s earlier 2009 settlement with Epstein for $500,000 included language releasing “other potential defendants,” a provision that became central to later disputes over who could be sued; courts and commentators debated whether the 2009 release shielded people she later named, a point raised repeatedly in filings about Prince Andrew and others [5] [6]. Business Insider and court filings show that the meaning of “potential defendants” was contested, which complicates parsing who could be directly targeted in 2015 litigation [6] [5].
4. Other litigation threads in 2015 referencing prominent figures
In 2015 Giuffre also filed a separate affidavit in a Crime Victims’ Rights Act case and her statements were used across legal actions that year; Alan Dershowitz publicly and legally denied Giuffre’s allegations and later initiated his own defamation-related litigation against Giuffre’s lawyers, reflecting an adversarial response from a named high‑profile figure [2] [3]. Court documents made public in subsequent years show a dense web of suits, counterclaims and discovery involving Maxwell, Epstein’s estate, Dershowitz and later Prince Andrew litigation [3] [1].
5. What the public record released later revealed — scope but not a simple named list
Unsealing of documents in later years (including 2022–2024 unseals) disclosed thousands of pages and lists of hundreds of names connected to Epstein’s network; reporting on those unseals indicates many names were first visible in documents tied to Giuffre’s suits, but the unsealed material is voluminous and does not reduce the 2015 litigation to a single neat roster of named public figures [2] [1] [7]. The Palm Beach Post and other outlets note that names circulating in later releases often trace back to 2015 materials but that context (who alleged what, and whether names were redacted or described as “potential”) varies across filings [8] [7].
6. Limits of the available sources and remaining ambiguities
Available sources in the provided set do not present a single definitive list in the 2015 complaint that reads as “Virginia Giuffre names X, Y, Z” in checklist form; instead, they show multiple filings and affidavits from 2015 and later that implicated Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz and that central litigation that year was a defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell [1] [2] [3]. If you seek a line‑by‑line inventory of every high‑profile name contained in the 2015 filings, the documents unsealed later (thousands of pages) and docket entries would need to be reviewed directly; the provided reporting and docket summaries point to the principal named figures but do not reproduce a single exhaustive list in these sources [7] [9].
If you want, I can (a) extract and list every named individual cited in the specific 2015 complaint PDFs or docket entries from CourtListener/Justia (where available in these sources), or (b) point to the unsealed exhibit bundles that contain the detailed lists for a document‑by‑document review [9] [7].