X (the website formerly known as Twitter) is reportedly stonewalling subpoena requests related to a legal case involving dead financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Why? Nobody knows, but it sure is weird.
According to Business Insider, the social media platform refuses to give up information about one of the accounts linked to an Epstein accuser, a woman named Rina Oh Amen. The legal case is otherwise unrelated to the platform itself, instead it involves a spat between Oh Amen and another Epstein accuser, the more well-known Virginia Giuffre.
While both women claim to have been victimized by Epstein, the dispute between them involves mutual accusations that they also participated in Epstein’s criminal activities.
Insider reports:
[Ghislaine] Maxwell recruited Giuffre at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2000, bringing her to Epstein. Giuffre has blamed Oh Amen for participating in the abuse by sexually and physically abusing her in the early 2000s. In 2021, Oh Amen sued Giuffre, alleging Giuffre defamed her with those claims. Giuffre countersued, alleging Oh Amen was Epstein’s “girlfriend.” In court filings and public statements, each has accused the other of acting as one of Epstein’s recruiters rather than a true victim.
The process of legal discovery is currently transpiring to acquire evidence related to the case, and both women’s attorneys are reaching out to relevant third parties. As part of this process, Giuffre has attempted to get access to one of Oh Amen’s former accounts on X that involved correspondence with Giuffre. This account was previously suspended, locking Oh Amen out and cutting off access to the DMs.
While a simple request by Giuffre lawyers for access to the account would seem a no-brainer, Insider writes that attorneys representing X have “countered with baffling, lengthy legalese-filled responses saying they wouldn’t provide any records,” and that, in one case, a company lawyer wrote “that Oh Amen had access to the X records and they could ask her — even though the whole point of the subpoena was that Oh Amen couldn’t access her data from her account.”
Gizmodo reached out to X for comment but didn’t immediately receive a response.
What exactly X is playing at here is anybody’s guess. As of May, X’s founder and former CEO, Elon Musk, was tied up in another legal case linked to Epstein. The U.S. Virgin Islands, the territory where Epstein’s infamous “pedo island” was located, subpoenaed Musk earlier this year for any communications he might have had with Epstein and with JP Morgan Chase. The Virgin Islands is currently suing JP Morgan Chase and has accused the bank of enabling Epstein’s crimes. Musk isn’t accused of any wrongdoing in the case, though he is one of numerous Silicon Valley luminaries who have been subpoenaed in the case (including Google’s co-founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page).
