Uncovered: Jean-Luc Brunel Hidden in Epstein's Butterfly Trust — 62 Names Seized on CD-ROM

Jean-Luc Brunel Epstein: Named in the 2013 Butterfly Trust

On December 31, 2013, Jeffrey Epstein created the Butterfly Trust, naming Erika A. Kellerhals and Richard Kahn as co-trustees. The trust agreement — a formal legal document transferring assets "IN TRUST" — listed its beneficiaries in Article Third.

"TRUST AGREEMENT dated December 1, 2013 by and among JEFFREY E. EPSTEIN, as Grantor, and ERIKA A. KELLERHALS, a U.S. citizen residing in the U.S. Virgin Islands and RICHARD KAHN, a U.S. citizen residing in the State of New York as Trustees"

Jean-Luc Brunel was among the original beneficiaries of this trust. So was Ghislaine Maxwell The 2013 Butterfly Trust Agreement.

Richard Kahn — who also brokered David Fiszel's most favored nations clause in his Epstein hedge fund arrangement — served as co-trustee. Erika Kellerhals was based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the jurisdiction where several Epstein-controlled entities were registered. One such entity, Southern Financial LLC — headquartered at 6100 Red Hook Quarter, St. Thomas — held $97 million in a Deutsche Bank investment account as of December 2017, just weeks before the Butterfly Trust beneficiary deletion Deutsche Bank Statement for Southern Financial LLC.

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Butterfly Trust Epstein: The January 2018 Deletion

On January 2, 2018, the acting trustees — Kellerhals and Bella Klein — executed a formal "Deletion and Addition of Beneficiaries" document. The filing removed three names from the Butterfly Trust:

"Delete each of [REDACTED], GHISLAINE N. MAXWELL, JEAN LUC BRUNEL and [REDACTED] as a beneficiary under Article Third of the Trust Agreement"

The deleted beneficiaries were replaced with a new list: Ann Rodriguez, Darren K. Indyke, Michelle F. Saipher, Richard Kahn, Lisa Kahn, and Paul Barrett Butterfly Trust Deletion and Addition of Beneficiaries.

The timing matters. By January 2018, the Miami Herald's Julie K. Brown was already deep into her "Perversion of Justice" investigation, which would publish in November 2018. The trust deletion occurred months before public scrutiny intensified — documents show Epstein's legal team was restructuring beneficiary lists while press inquiries were underway.

Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn would later be named co-executors of Epstein's estate after his death in August 2019. The same individuals who replaced Brunel and Maxwell as trust beneficiaries became responsible for managing the financial aftermath.

Brunel Epstein France: 62 Names on a Seized CD-ROM

On July 8, 2020 — six days after Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest on American soil — the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office sent a formal mutual legal assistance request to U.S. authorities. The French investigation had been initiated on August 30, 2019, less than three weeks after Epstein's death.

The charges under investigation were severe:

"Preliminary investigation initiated on August 30, 2019 on charges of rape committed against a minor of 15 years of age, rape committed against a minor of over 15 years of age, rape, sexual assault on a minor over 15 years of age, sexual assault, participation in an association"

France requested "any hearing (hearing as a defendant or as a witness) and any investigative acts (search, computer exploitation, documents seized, written statements)" concerning Jean-Luc Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell. The request also sought information on all victims of French nationality French Mutual Legal Assistance Request re: Brunel.

The French filing disclosed a critical piece of physical evidence: investigators had recovered a CD-ROM inscribed "CONFIDENTIAL - COMPREHENSIVE CHART" containing an Excel file with 62 women's names. The document does not specify where this CD-ROM was seized or who created it.

The DOJ's Document Search: February 2021

Internal DOJ correspondence from February 2021 shows U.S. government attorneys actively running document searches for Brunel-related material in their Relativity database — the same e-discovery platform used to process the Epstein document archive.

"Is it possible to do a search for documents that contain, for [example] ... U.S. Embassy, Paris"

The emails reveal a methodical but constrained search process. On February 1, 2021, a DOJ attorney ran an initial set of Relativity searches using multiple variations of Brunel's name and related terms, then circulated a chart showing the number of unique document hits for each search term. By February 2, colleagues were asking whether the results represented unique documents or multiple hits within the same file — a critical distinction when dealing with an archive of nearly 500,000 pages.

"There is a limit to how many variations and connectors we're willing to test-run for volume, of course. If they asked us to run all the different name constructions as search terms in combination with all of the other terms they gave us, we'd have to run dozens and dozens of searches."

The internal debate centered on scope. Prosecutors acknowledged that Relativity permitted complex multi-term searches, but pushed back on running every possible combination. They requested that the French side submit "a narrow universe of very specific requests" before committing to additional search runs. The back-and-forth spanned from January 27 through February 10, 2021 — two weeks of procedural negotiation over search methodology Internal DOJ correspondence re: Brunel document searches.

The timeline of this correspondence is significant. France had submitted its formal mutual legal assistance request in July 2020. Seven months later, DOJ attorneys were still calibrating which searches to run. This correspondence took place eleven months before Brunel was found dead in his Paris prison cell on February 19, 2022, while awaiting trial on charges of rape of minors and sexual harassment. Whether the completed search results were transmitted to French prosecutors before Brunel's death — and whether the delay in processing affected the French investigation's progress — is not documented in the released files.

Brunel's Civil Lawsuit Against Epstein

Before the criminal investigations, Brunel had his own legal action against Epstein. A 2015 civil summons filed in Miami-Dade County shows Jean-Luc Brunel as plaintiff, suing Jeffrey Epstein, Tyler McDonald, and Tyler McDonald d/b/a YLORG.

The summons directed service to Epstein at 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach — the same property where FBI evidence collection took place Brunel v. Epstein Civil Summons.

The nature of this lawsuit — a model agent suing the man who funded his career — has never been publicly explained through released documents. The complaint itself does not appear in the archive.

What's Still Missing

• The Butterfly Trust asset schedule: Schedule A, listing the actual property transferred into the trust, is referenced but not included in the released documents.
• The redacted beneficiaries: Two names were deleted alongside Maxwell and Brunel but remain redacted. Their identities have not been publicly disclosed.
• Brunel's CD-ROM: France's filing references 62 women's names on a seized CD-ROM. The contents of this file have not been made public.
• The civil lawsuit complaint: Brunel's 2015 suit against Epstein — what was the dispute? The summons exists but the complaint does not appear in the archive.
• Cross-border cooperation results: Whether the U.S. fulfilled France's July 2020 mutual legal assistance request before Brunel's death in February 2022 is not documented in released files.

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