Was the "REAL" Epstein list leaked on the dark web? No, that's not true: The article that made the claim in the headline offered no evidence and zero proof in the body of the story that a list belonging to convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein was found on the dark web. A list on the dark web was not mentioned once in the article.
The claim appeared in an article published by News Punch on February 18, 2023, and titled "VIP Elite Panic After REAL Epstein List Leaked on Dark Web - News Punch" (archived here). The article opened:
The life and supposed death of Jeffrey Epstein has been one of great controversy, and for good reason - the implications of the allegations are huge.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
VIP Elite Panic After REAL Epstein List Leaked on Dark Web - News Punch
If you are following the mainstream news coverage of court cases and expecting them to release real information about Epstein's VIP elite clients, you are wasting your time.
The text of the article contradicts the headline. The article claims the "real information about Epstein's VIP elite clients" will never be released by the "mainstream media." The article does not ever mention the "dark web" or a list appearing on there. The article states that "We" -- an apparent reference to the site and its audience -- are still searching for the list:
But the information will come out. We just have to keep looking in the right places. And when the information comes out, we cannot forgive and forget.
A list of people who flew on Epstein's private plane has been available on the internet since 2015 and a list of Epstein associates from Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal case was awaiting publication as of February 20, 2023.
A February 10, 2023 report on FOXNews.com claimed a list of names of "those associated with deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein will be unsealed in the near future," According to court records, the list was filed on February 7, 2023 and includes associates, victims, and employees of Epstein but with names still withheld. That was the last filing in the case as of February 20, 2023.
The flight logs for Epstein's plane, dubbed Lolita Express, are handwritten by pilot David Rogers and were obtained by reporters in January 2015 after they were filed as an exhibit in a federal lawsuit. You can download the flight logs from Lead Stories co-founder Alan Duke's Scribd account:
Epstein Flight logs by Alan Duke on Scribd
The flight logs detail trips taken between 1997 and 2005 and included former President Bill Clinton, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, former Harvard president Larry Summers, Casey Wasserman, billionaire Ron Burkle (spelled incorrectly as Burke), former national security advisor Sandy Berger, and Virginia Roberts - the woman who claims she was a sex victim of Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein is on the list twice and Ghislane Maxwell is also on the list.
NewsPunch
NewsPunch, originally started as Your News Wire, is among the most prolific online publishers of fake news. NewsPunch has published numerous fake news articles in the past, so anything it publishes should be taken with a large grain of salt. Its Facebook page, "The People's Voice", lost the Facebook verification checkmark, according to a 2018 report from Media Matters For America.
