Naomi Campbell returned to Instagram on Feb. 15 to once again address scrutiny over her past connection to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Newly unsealed documents related to Epstein mention the supermodel nearly 300 times, according to the New York Times, with records revealing the catwalk legend’s history with the disgraced figure.
“I said it in 2019, and I’ll say it again now: don’t come at me when there is no wrongdoing on my part,” she wrote, per Complex, referring to the period when her name first surfaced publicly following Epstein’s arrest. “I stand in complete solidarity with the courageous survivors,” she added.
The new Epstein files show a history of interactions between Naomi and the disgraced financier.
Recently released email exchanges indicate that Campbell, 55, requested to travel on Epstein’s private jet and planned to meet him at his New York mansion. Invitations were also extended to him on her behalf for high-profile events around the world, with many of the arrangements reportedly handled by Epstein’s longtime assistant, Lesley Groff, according to the New York Times.
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Federal investigators’ interviews with unnamed victims state that Epstein introduced them to the British model at social gatherings and that they saw her at his mansion and on his private island. The documents further suggest Campbell remained in contact with Epstein after his 2008 Florida conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, offering additional insight into the scope of their association.
One document titled “List of People Who Need JE’s Address!” includes Campbell’s name among dozens of others, alongside instructions for sending letters and packages to the Florida jail where Epstein began serving his sentence in 2008.
According to attorney Martin Singer, 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.”
Transcripts appear to show Epstein allegedly name-dropping Campbell when recruiting young women.
FBI interview transcripts also allege that Epstein referenced his connection to Campbell while recruiting young women, suggesting he could help advance their modeling careers. In 2020, an unnamed victim said Epstein promised her opportunities with Victoria’s Secret and claimed he knew Campbell as well as Leslie Wexner, then chief executive of L Brands, Victoria’s Secret’s parent company. (Epstein managed Wexner’s finances for years.) The same victim said she was introduced to Campbell at Epstein’s private office.
In a statement, Singer stressed that Campbell was never under contract with the lingerie brand and said that if Epstein invoked her name to “impress anyone or to build trust with them, he did that entirely without her knowledge or authorization.”
According to People, the new documents show that Campbell and Epstein communicated by phone, met in person, and invited each other to various social gatherings, either directly or through assistants. Among the events she invited him to were her 2004 birthday celebration in St. Tropez, a party at the Dolce & Gabbana store in Paris marking her 25-year relationship with the brand, and a NEON charity event she co-hosted in Moscow with Dasha Zhukova, then-wife of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Invitations to the Paris and Moscow events were sent in 2010, one year after Epstein was released from jail following his guilty plea to soliciting a minor. An email from a member of Campbell’s team regarding the Paris event read: “I will be on the door if there are any problems.”
The Moscow event took place while Epstein was under house arrest and supported NEON, a charity aimed at benefiting children’s health and education programs throughout Russia.
In January 2016, emails show Campbell unsuccessfully requested use of Epstein’s private jet for travel to Miami. The exchange appears to mark their last known communication, effectively ending a 15-year friendship that began when they met in 2001.
Campbell’s legal team has firmly denied any wrongdoing. While acknowledging she knew Epstein for years — including after his 2008 conviction — her attorneys maintain she was unaware of his “heinous” criminal conduct before his 2019 arrest and had no contact with him afterward.
“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 Campbell lived in Moscow from 2008 to 2013 and “she had no idea that Epstein was a registered sex offender.”
Naomi Campbell first publicly addressed her affiliation to Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 shortly after his arrest.
Campbell first publicly addressed the controversy in 2019, shortly after Epstein’s arrest. She posted a YouTube video responding to a report by Daily Mail that linked her to Epstein, as well as other controversial figures, and questioned her philanthropic efforts ahead of an honor from the British Fashion Council.
“I was shocked by this article in the [Daily] Mail on Sunday. I’ve always said that I’m not a saint, that I am a work in progress. But I will not be held hostage by my past,” Campbell said at the time. “I won’t be undermined or have my team be undermined for all the wonderful and great work and for all the people that have collaborated and supported the cause that Fashion for Relief chooses each year.” She rejected the outlet’s description of Fashion For Relief as a “vanity charity,” calling the piece “a distorted piece of journalism” and “a direct character assassination and belongs in, like, an Orwell book.” She also said she was not given an opportunity to comment before publication.
In the same video, Campbell confirmed she met Epstein at her birthday party but denied any knowledge of his crimes. “What he’s done is indefensible, and when I heard what he’d done it sickened me to my stomach just like everybody else,” she said. “I’ve had my fair share of sexual predators. And thank god that I had good people around me that protected me from this. Right now I stand with the victims…”
Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
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