Jeffrey Epstein
Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Image/AFP News

One of Jeffrey Epstein's victims claimed that he had kept "sex tapes" of famous public figures like former US President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

Sarah Ransome, who met Epstein in 2006, was one of several victims of the sex offender. She reportedly claimed that her friend had sex with "Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Richard Branson," and Epstein filmed them in the act, per a report by The Guardian.

She made the claims about the sex tapes in a series of emails to a columnist in 2016. "Thank God she managed to get a hold of some footage of the filmed sex tapes, which clearly identify the faces of Clinton, Prince Andrew and Branson having sexual intercourse with her. Frustratingly enough Epstein was not seen in any of the footage, but he was clever like that," she wrote.

She also accused former US President Donald Trump of having sex with one of her friends at Epstein's New York mansion on a "regular" basis. "She confided in me about her casual 'friendship' with Donald. Mr. Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her," one of her emails read.

However, she later retracted her allegations, saying that "it is not worth coming forward, and I will never be heard anyhow and only bad things will happen as a consequence of me going public".

The emails were provided to a US court as part of a lawsuit by victim Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite convicted of recruiting young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

The names of more than 150 people mentioned in the lawsuit had been kept sealed for years, but a US court last month ordered that there was no legal justification to keep them private.

The firm representing Epstein's lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, used her failure to provide the alleged sex tapes to the court to demonstrate that Ransome's claims were "baseless and unfounded". Ransome had claimed that she was forced to have sex with Dershowitz, who continues to deny the allegations.

"[Ransome's] testimony was fabricated from whole cloth. Ms Ransome's testimony also contains a slew of other incendiary claims concerning the sexual proclivities of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and other prominent individuals," read a letter from Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP to the court.

"The emails are a necessary antidote to Ms Ransome's deposition misstatements because they demonstrate she manifestly lacks credibility".

Prince Andrew quit public life in 2019 because of his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of his royal patronages and military titles in January 2022 following allegations of rape and sexual abuse by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, which he has since settled out of court.

Epstein, who was arrested in July 2019 on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, was found hanged in his New York jail cell while awaiting trial.