Which world leaders have publicly acknowledged visits to Little St. James and what records support those claims?
Executive summary
Multiple public figures — notably Prince Andrew, Stephen Hawking, Les Wexner and (by his own account in court records) Alan Dershowitz — have been publicly identified as visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s Little St. James; evidence cited in reporting includes flight logs, court filings, contemporary photographs and investigative data sets such as near‑real‑time location maps from a data broker (WIRED) and previously released flight manifests and calendar entries [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Who has publicly acknowledged visiting the island — and how they say it happened
Some individuals have explicitly acknowledged visiting or being present in Epstein’s orbit. Alan Dershowitz said he “had been on the plane many times and he had been to the island once, with his wife and daughter” in a livestream cited by CBS News [4]. Stephen Hawking’s presence is documented with photographs from a 2006 conference and is reported by multiple outlets [5] [2]. Les Wexner is reported by former employees to have “visited the island at least once” [5] [1]. Ehud Barak has told media he visited the island but denied inappropriate encounters, according to The Cut [6]. The Independent and other outlets recount these admissions or reported visits and cite photos, staff testimony and contemporaneous reporting [2] [6].
2. Strong documentary records cited by journalists
Reporters point to several documentary sources: flight logs and plane manifests that have been made public in past reporting; court filings and depositions in which names are mentioned; photographs from Epstein’s gatherings; and a large set of mobile‑location coordinates and inferred residence matches compiled and published by WIRED from a data broker called Near Intelligence [3] [7] [4]. The WIRED data set reportedly contains 11,279 coordinates and maps trips to the island as late as July 6, 2019 [3]. ABC’s coverage of DOJ releases also notes seized materials included a folder called “LSJ logbook,” suggesting contemporaneous records existed among investigators’ evidence [8].
3. Cases where public claims and records diverge
Several high‑profile names appear repeatedly in journalistic accounts and court papers but deny being to the island or have limited corroborating records. Bill Clinton’s name is repeatedly mentioned in court materials and media reporting, yet Secret Service records and Epstein’s flight logs cited in reporting have not placed him on Little St. James; reporting warns against equating name mentions with confirmed island visits [4] [9] [1]. Business Insider, Hindustan Times and other outlets also report claims that Clinton appears often in documents, but sources disagree on whether those documents prove island visits [4] [10].
4. The role of investigative data and its limits
WIRED and Quartz reported a leak from Near Intelligence that mapped devices at Little St. James and inferred likely home/work locations for visitors — an unprecedented digital data layer that journalists say “documents the numerous trips” and points to hundreds of inferred visitor residences [3] [11]. Data‑broker evidence is compelling for patterns but has technical and ethical limits: provenance, accuracy of device‑to‑person attribution, and the broker’s own integrity have been questioned in reporting [3]. Wired and Quartz both frame the dataset as strong circumstantial evidence but not a legal proof of an individual’s activity without corroborating records [3] [11].
5. How courts and newsrooms have treated names and privacy
Courts unsealed many Epstein‑related documents following litigation, but judges and prosecutors redacted victim identifiers and sometimes withheld names for privacy reasons; journalists caution against “guilt by association” when names appear in lists or logs without context [12] [4]. Newsweek and CBS News emphasize that unsealed documents do not equate to criminal proof for all named individuals and note judicial limits on released material [12] [4].
6. What is not confirmed in these sources
Available sources do not mention definitive, court‑proven lists that assign criminal acts to all named visitors; they do not provide a single authoritative public roster of “every” visitor corroborated by multiple independent records [4] [3]. They also do not show Secret Service or flight‑manifest evidence placing some frequently discussed figures — notably Bill Clinton — on Little St. James, per the FOIA reporting cited [1] [4].
Conclusion — what the records reliably show and what remains unsettled
Contemporary reporting ties specific documented visits (photos, staff testimony, flight logs) to a subset of public figures such as Prince Andrew, Stephen Hawking and Les Wexner, while other high‑profile names appear in court papers, flight logs or data‑broker maps with varying degrees of corroboration [1] [2] [3] [4]. Journalists and courts have released material that strengthens some claims and leaves others ambiguous; readers should treat flight logs, court mentions and leaked location datasets as complementary pieces of evidence that require case‑by‑case corroboration [3] [4].