In the millions of documents released by the Justice Department related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, one of the fashion world’s most recognizable names emerges again and again: Naomi Campbell.
Email exchanges reflect that Ms. Campbell, 55, asked to fly on his private plane and said she would meet Mr. Epstein at his New York mansion. He was invited on her behalf to lavish events around the world. These plans were mostly coordinated through Mr. Epstein’s longtime assistant Lesley Groff.
And in interviews with federal investigators, unnamed victims said that Mr. Epstein introduced them to the British supermodel at social events, and that they saw the model in his mansion and on his island.
The documents show that Ms. Campbell stayed in Mr. Epstein’s orbit long after he was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor, and shed new light on the extent of their ties.
Their interactions provide another example of how Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019, leveraged and influenced a vast, powerful social network as he lured girls and young women into his life.
Ms. Campbell’s association with Mr. Epstein had previously become public through legal proceedings involving him, his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a federal prison sentence on sex-trafficking charges, and others.
A lawyer for Ms. Campbell, Martin Singer, said in a lengthy emailed statement that his client had no knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s “heinous criminal conduct until after his 2019 arrest” and had no contact with him after that.
“Prior to Epstein’s 2019 arrest in New York, my client knew nothing about his appalling criminal conduct,” Mr. Singer wrote in the statement. “If my client had ever encountered any young woman whom she thought was being victimized by Epstein, she would have personally taken immediate action to help her.” He added that Ms. Campbell was living in Moscow from 2008 to 2013 and “she had no idea that Epstein was a registered sex offender.”
Ms. Campbell has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The F.B.I. interviews with victims did not contain any corroborating evidence of their statements related to Ms. Campbell.
A review by The New York Times found that Ms. Campbell’s name appears in nearly 300 documents released by the Justice Department, including some duplicate entries, making her a well-known female celebrity figure in documents also populated by powerful men, including former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and President Trump.
One document titled “List of People Who Need JE’s Address!” lists Ms. Campbell and several dozen other people under a set of instructions on how to mail letters, postcards and books to the Florida jail where Mr. Epstein began serving his sentence in the summer of 2008.
According to Mr. Singer, Ms. Campbell “has no idea who created this list or why her name appears on this document. She never asked anyone for Epstein’s address to communicate with him in jail in Florida.”
When recruiting young women, Mr. Epstein seemed to dangle his association with Ms. Campbell to convince them that a modeling career was within reach, according to F.B.I. interview transcripts. In 2020, an unnamed victim who met Mr. Epstein when she was 15 said that Mr. Epstein had promised to get her jobs at Victoria’s Secret and told her that he knew Ms. Campbell, who has walked in the brand’s famed fashion shows, and Leslie Wexner, who was then the chief executive of the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, L Brands. (For years, Mr. Epstein managed Mr. Wexner’s finances.) The same victim said she was introduced to Ms. Campbell at Mr. Epstein’s private office.
In the emailed statement, Mr. Singer said that Ms. Campbell was never under contract with the lingerie brand, and added that if Mr. Epstein used her name to “impress anyone or to build trust with them, he did that entirely without her knowledge or authorization.”
Another victim, in interviews in 2019 with the F.B.I., said that when she was 18 years old and being introduced to Mr. Epstein, she saw Ms. Campbell at his New York mansion during a dinner party. Another victim claimed in interviews, also in 2019, to have seen Ms. Campbell on Mr. Epstein’s island.
Virginia Giuffre, one of Mr. Epstein’s most outspoken victims, who died by suicide last year, had also previously reported in 2016 that Mr. Epstein introduced her to Ms. Campbell, according to court documents.
In the statement, Ms. Campbell’s lawyer noted that she and “a group of people going to an F1 race” were briefly on Mr. Epstein’s island “on a transfer from a commercial flight.” He also said that Ms. Campbell did not recall ever meeting with Mr. Epstein’s victims and was “never at his house for any social event or gathering” but that she did visit his home office for “3 or 4 business meetings.”
After Mr. Epstein was released from prison in 2009 and was a registered sex offender, he stayed in contact with Ms. Campbell, seemly providing her with access to his network.
In one 2010 email exchange, Mr. Epstein instructs his assistant, Ms. Groff, to invite Linda Wachner, the former chief executive of the apparel business Warnaco Group, to his house to meet Ms. Campbell and an associate. The next day, his assistant informed him that “Naomi is confirmed.”
In his emailed statement, Mr. Singer said that Ms. Campbell did meet with Ms. Wachner as she “was trying to do a lingerie and swimwear line” and Mr. Epstein “led her to believe that he could assist with that.” Ms. Wachner’s lawyer said that her client joined the meeting virtually; lawyers for both women confirmed that nothing came of the meeting.
That same year, Mr. Epstein was invited to Ms. Campbell’s surprise 40th-birthday party in Cannes, France, which was described in the email as “a private event for her closest friends and family.” According to her lawyer, Ms. Campbell did not make the guest list, and Mr. Epstein did not attend the party.
Mr. Epstein was also invited to an event in Paris to celebrate Ms. Campbell’s 25-year career with the luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. An unsigned response to the emailed invitation read: “Jeffrey will come plus two.” Ms. Campbell’s lawyer said that Mr. Epstein did come, along with Ms. Maxwell, and “that they stayed for approximately 20 minutes.”
Their relationship seemed to go beyond frequenting the same elite party circuits. Ms. Campbell’s online correspondence indicates that the model felt comfortable sharing the granular details of her schedule with Ms. Groff and Mr. Epstein. A 2010 email to Mr. Epstein from Ms. Groff, for example, informed him that “Naomi Campbell was having a facial and said she will call back.”
“I want to see Jeffrey,” Ms. Campbell wrote in a 2015 email to Ms. Groff discussing her upcoming travel plans. She signed off with, “exhausted babes.”
In one 2016 email exchange, an associate of Mr. Epstein asks if Ms. Campbell can use “the plane.” Later, in that same exchange, another associate of Mr. Epstein is instructed to find a charter for Ms. Campbell “to go from NY to Miami tonight and fly back on sat or Sunday!!”
In his emailed statement, Ms. Campbell’s lawyer said that his client “was on Epstein’s plane on a few occasions but she never observed any inappropriate conduct of any kind.”
Zach Seward contributed reporting.
Alisha Haridasani Gupta is a Times reporter covering women’s health and health inequities.
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